NetApp to Acquire Start-Up Akorri

NetApp has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Akorri Networks, Inc., a privately-held company headquartered in Littleton, Massachusetts, in an all-cash transaction.

Akorri was founded in 2005 and is a provider of data center management software focused on performance capacity analytics for virtualized, shared IT infrastructures.

Akorri enables customers to identify performance bottlenecks and improve storage capacity planning to free up the time, people, and budget resources that are needed to run virtual environments.

Akorri has gained significant market momentum, growing its customer base by more than 100% in 2010. Customers rely on Akorri to reduce the risks and costs of deploying virtualization with an integrated management approach across the entire IT stack, including applications, servers, networks, and storage.

Akorri has received numerous awards and accolades, including The Wall Street Journal‘s list of the Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies with the most potential to become ‘the next big thing,’ and Gold in the 2009 Storage magazine-SearchStorage.com Product of the Year awards for Storage Management Tools.

The acquisition is expected to close early in NetApp’s fourth fiscal quarter, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. The terms of the deal are not being disclosed at this time.

Portfolio and Go-to-Market Synergy
Together, NetApp and Akorri will provide customers with comprehensive tools to automate and analyze their shared IT infrastructures, efficiently deliver on service levels, and respond to rapidly changing business needs.

Gartner, Inc. positioned Akorri in the Visionaries quadrant and NetApp in the Leaders quadrant for Storage Resource Management and SAN Management Software. The combination of Akorri and NetApp is expected to provide customers the industry’s leading capabilities for storage management and analytics.

Akorri extends NetApp OnCommand with performance capacity analytics to provide customers greater visibility across the entire IT stack. As a result, customers can further improve IT efficiency and flexibility through functions that help control, automate, and analyze their shared IT infrastructure.

NetApp provides Akorri immediate enterprise credibility with the industry’s storage platform of choice for building an efficient and flexible shared IT infrastructure as the foundation for cloud computing.

NetApp gives Akorri the ability to reach enterprise customers and service providers to accelerate adoption of its products around the world.

Manish Goel, executive vice president, Product Operations, NetApp, said: "The ability to accurately predict and manage performance and capacity requirements has been a common obstacle for many customers wanting to transition to a virtualized environment. Akorri further strengthens NetApp’s data management capabilities to achieve greater quality of service and performance in their virtual and cloud environments. With these enhanced capabilities, customers can accelerate their transition to a shared IT infrastructure so that they can use IT as a tool to capitalize on new growth opportunities and spend fewer resources managing their environments."

Rich Corley, Founder, CTO, and vice president of engineering, Akorri, said: "Akorri and NetApp share a common vision of a dynamic IT infrastructure that is tightly integrated and highly efficient. Akorri has emerged as a leader in performance management software by providing greater visibility and insight across the entire IT stack. Customers are thinking differently and choosing NetApp today as they transition to a shared IT infrastructure. The combination of our two companies will provide our customers the most comprehensive tools to plan for change and growth in their business."