Red Hat to acquire open source storage systems’ firm Inktank

Red Hat announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Inktank, a provider of scale-out, open source storage systems. Inktank’s flagship technology, Inktank Ceph Enterprise, delivers object and block storage software to enterprises deploying public or private clouds, including many early adopters of OpenStack clouds.

Combined with Red Hat’s existing GlusterFS-based storage offering, the addition of Inktank positions Red Hat as the leading provider of open software-defined storage across object, block and file system storage.

Founded in 2012, Inktank’s main objective has been to drive the widespread adoption of Ceph, a scalable, open source, software-defined storage system that runs on commodity hardware.

Ceph was developed by Inktank’s founder and chief technology officer, Sage Weil, and is a replacement for legacy storage systems and provides a unified solution for cloud computing environments.

Inktank’s primary goal has been to help customers scale their storage to the exabyte-level and beyond in a cost-effective way. Inktank has provided customers with expertise, processes, tools and support with their enterprise subscription and service offerings. Inktank’s customers include Cisco, CERN and Deutsche Telekom, and its partners include Alcatel-Lucent and Dell.

Red Hat has agreed to acquire Inktank, a privately-held company, for approximately $175 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close in May 2014.

“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. We believe our open storage technologies will be critical in the management of data in the coming era of cloud computing,” commented Sage Weil, founder and CTO, Inktank. “Joining Red Hat will no doubt lead to tremendous innovation that will ultimately serve the industry well and answer the demand for open storage solutions fully integrated with existing and emerging data center architectures such as OpenStack.”