[ibimage==31455==Large==none==self==ibimage_align-center]
Open source software developer Inktank, which has offices in LA and San Francisco, announced its acquisition by Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat for $175 million this week.
Not only is this good news for the open source community, but it’s a smart move for software subscription provider Red Hat as it looks to pit Ceph, Inktank’s main product which allows users to build out their own storage offerings, against Amazon Web Services. Red Hat is out to be the largest provider of open software-defined storage and Inktank will give it a nice leg-up because the amount of data stored on Ceph is expected to grow tenfold by year’s end, LA Business Journal reported.
“The strength of these world-class open storage technologies will offer compelling capability as customers move to software-based scale-out storage systems,” Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens said in a statement.
Ceph, in addition to being a competitor to Amazon Web Services, is also a competitor of sorts to Gluster, which Red Hat acquired in 2011 for $136 million. After the Inktank deal (Red Hat’s ninth acquisition!) closes this month, Red Hat will integrate Ceph and sell it with a subscription model. This deal will give Ceph the chance to integrate more directly with Red Hat’s other open source products as well.
Founded in 2012 by CTO Sage Weil, Inktank has a 15-person team stationed locally and has raised $14.4 million from international entrepreneurs like Mark Shuttleworth and from New Dream Network, which Inktank CTO and co-founder Sage Weil also co-founded.
“With a shared commitment to open source, open standards and customer success, joining forces with Red Hat is something we are all very excited about,” Weil said in a statement. “We believe our open storage technologies will be critical in the management of data in the coming era of cloud computing.”
Photo credit: Shutterstock
