• Press Office

To buy or not to buy

By Phil Jones, CEO, Shoden Data Systems UK, July 2011

The announcement about Oracle’s acquisition of Pillar doesn’t come as a huge surprise; and not just because most large IT vendors today seem to prefer shopping for new technologies rather than developing them in-house these days.

The software giant was in fact already linked to the storage vendor via its co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison who, through his own venture capital firm Tako Ventures, was also the Pillar backer. As with many other acquisitions, the reason we are told the merger happened was because of the synergy between the parties’ technologies and product ranges. So far so good (for Oracle and Pillar); but what about end-users and resellers? What does this latest addition to the red vendor’s storage portfolio mean for them?

To start, they will have less choice when it comes to selecting storage arrays, with Ellison’s company having already taken SUN (and with it StorageTek) off the independent market. We now find that (even) more power is concentrated in fewer vendors and less choice is rarely a good thing in a properly operating market. Oracle’s purchase of Pillar continues a trend that we have been seeing for the last couple of years and spells out the departure of another emerging storage technology provider together with Data Domain, 3PAR, Isilon and Compellent. Interestingly, apart from EMC (who of course, own VMware), all the acquisitive storage companies are also serious server manufacturers.

Does this mean that customers will soon be buying stove-pipe single-vendor solutions rather than individual best-of-breed technologies? Will they no longer be able to pick & mix but have to bow to a pre-determined stack?

One thing is certain: all these acquisitions are proof that it is much easier, quicker and cheaper for the big players to buy interesting technologies that spend many years and dollars on R&D. But the question we hear asked more and more is not going away: with all the mid-sized storage players being absorbed into the folds of the leading manufacturers, where is the next generation of exciting storage technologies going to come from?

About Shoden

Shoden Data Systems PTY (Ltd.) provides innovative, high-end technology solutions to leading organisations across Africa, allowing them to gain what Shoden refers to as:“The data centre advantage”. Shoden aims to deliver the data centre advantage by understanding clients’ challenges and implementing optimised solutions that address these challenges, coupled with excellent service and support. www.shoden.co.za

For further information

Melinda de Gee
Shoden Data Systems
083 212 9840
Melinda.degee@shoden.co.za