IBM buys Israeli storage start-up XIV

Computerworld - IBM has bought XIV, an Israeli manufacturer of storage-area network equipment. XIV's main product is Nextra, a storage system based on a grid of standard hardware components.

Nextra's self-healing, self-tuning and dynamic scaling capabilities will give IBM new technology to address the growing requirement for high-performance storage for digital archives, digital media and Web 2.0 applications, IBM said.

Around 4 petabytes (4 million gigabytes) of Nextra storage are already in service, XIV said.

XIV employees will join IBM's system storage business unit, the companies said. Moshe Yanai, chairman of XIV, previously worked at EMC Corp.

The companies would not put a price on the deal, but reports in the Israeli financial press earlier this week valued it at $300 million to $350 million.

This is the latest in a line of storage-related acquisitions for IBM, which recently bought Softek, FileNet and NovusCG to beef up its storage offering.

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