IBM to Acquire Cleversafe for Object Storage in Hybrid Clouds

IBM agreed to acquire Cleversafe, a developer and manufacturer of object-based storage software and appliances. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Cleversafe, which is based in Chicago, holds more than 350 patents in object-based, on-premise storage solutions that enable clients to scale to exabytes of storage, or billions of gigabytes. Clients across multiple industries use Cleversafe for large-scale content repository, backup, archive, collaboration and storage as a service. The company was founded in 2004 and employs approximately 210 people.

IBM said the acquisition will strengthen its positions in storage and hybrid cloud and support clients’ drive to next generation mobile, social and analytics applications. The Cleversafe technologies will be integrated into the IBM Cloud to enhance IBM’s Infrastructure as a Service, SoftLayer and the SoftLayer Object Storage services platform, providing clients a hybrid cloud deployment model that offers greater choice of geography, performance, cost optimization and flexibility.

"Today a massive digital transformation is underway as organizations increasingly turn to cloud computing for innovative ways to manage more complex business operations and increasing volumes of data in a secure and effective way,” said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, IBM Cloud. “Cleversafe, a pioneer in object storage, will add to our efforts to help clients overcome these challenges by extending and strengthening our cloud storage strategy, as well as our portfolio.”

“IBM is an innovator and leader in cloud and storage and we’re excited about the opportunities that lay ahead once this transaction closes,” said John Morris, President and CEO of Cleversafe. “Together with IBM we can extend our object storage leadership position to address the broadest set of workloads for clients with the most expansive set of object-based solutions.”
Cleversafe’s Dispersed Storage Network (dsNet) solutions enhance on-premise storage options for clients and service providers with low-cost, large scale active archives and unstructured data content stores. The solutions complement IBM’s software defined Spectrum Storage portfolio for data protection and backup, tape archive, as well as a high performance file and object solution where the focus is on response time.

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http://www.cleversafe.com