In an effort to bolster its hybrid cloud strategy, Microsoft Corporation has acquired flash storage company Avere Systems for an undisclosed amount.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Avere, which provides NFS and SMB file storage for Windows and Linux clients running in the cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments, was incorporated by Dan Nydick, Michael Kazar, Ronald Bianchini in 2008. So far, the firm has raised $86 million with the last investment worth $14 million coming in the form of Series E funding from Google and Western Digital in March 2017. Other early investors include Lightspeed Ventures, Tenaya Capital, Menlo Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners.
Avere uses a combination of file system and caching technologies to support the performance requirements for customers who run large-scale compute workloads.
"Avere Systems will be joining Microsoft to continue our mission to enable the most demanding Enterprise workloads to run in the datacentre, in the cloud and in hybrid cloud environments. Avere’s customers include many of the world’s top brands in media and entertainment, life sciences, technology and finance," Ronald Bianchini Jr, CEO and president of Avere Systems, said in a statement.
"In the media and entertainment industry, Avere has worked with global brands including Sony Pictures Imageworks, animation studio Illumination Mac Guff and Moving Picture Company to help reduce production time and lower costs in a world where innovation and time to market is more critical than ever," said Jason Zander, corporate vice president, Microsoft Azure.
"By bringing together Avere’s storage expertise with the power of Microsoft’s cloud, customers will benefit from industry-leading innovations that enable the largest, most complex high-performance workloads to run in Microsoft Azure," Zander said.
The acquisition comes close on the heels to Amazon Web Services launching a new Linux platform that can run on client's servers and can be rented out by clients. Amazon's AWS leads the cloud segment with 40% market share followed by Microsoft Azure and Google, each with a 25% market share.
