Acquisition Roundup: EMC, HP and Tech Data Make Moves

This week saw a number of high-profile acquisitions, with EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Tech Data Corp. driving the action.

EMC's was the only deal with a dollar figure attached, and it was a big one. The storage giant has a definitive agreement to buy privately-held Virtustream for $1.2 billion in a deal expected to close in the third quarter.

The acquisition is part of EMC's effort to build an end-to-end hybrid cloud infrastructure and services offering. Virtustream will be part of the EMC Federation family with Virtustream's CEO and co-founder Rodney Rogers reporting to EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci.

The Virtustream products -- which migrate, run and manage applications, including SAP, in the cloud -- will be sold direct and through EMC partners.

The HP deal fits into its network functions virtualization (NFV) push, branded the HP OpenNFV Program. The company is acquiring Mountain View, Calif.-based ConteXtream.

Saar Gillai, senior vice president and general manager of NFV for HP, in a blog post described ConteXtream as a provider of OpenDaylight-based, carrier-grade SDN fabric for NFV and a current HP OpenNFV partner. "ConteXtream offers solutions that allow service providers to create a more flexible and programmable network through an SDN/NFV model," he said.

Distributor Tech Data is acquiring parts of Signature Technology Group (STG), a North American datacenter and professional services company, in a deal expected to close next month.

Phoenix-based STG's services will be folded into Tech Data's Advanced Infrastructure Solutions (AIS) division. In a statement on the deal, Joe Quaglia, president of the Americas at Tech Data, said STG will strengthen Tech Data's datacenter offering, diversify the services portfolio and provide an opportunity for the distributor's solution provider partners.

Chuck Bartlett, senior vice president of AIS at Tech Data, signaled that the STG addition would result in packages that could backstop solution providers' other offerings.

"IDC has predicted that over the next two years, more than 60 percent of companies will stop managing their IT infrastructure and rely on qualified service partners to boost efficiency and provide value," Bartlett said in a statement. "STG will complement our AIS offering, giving our solution providers an extension of their business and service levels for their end users. Their specialized, expert skillset in the datacenter will help provide enhanced support for our field organization, better equipping our solution providers to effectively serve complex datacenter environments."

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 28, 2015