[colug-432] Fwd: Press Release: Red Hat to Acquire Gluster

[Scott McCarty]

I don't usually post to Colug, but this is really cool info!!!!


----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Kerri Catallozzi" <kcatallo at redhat.com>
To: media-monitor at redhat.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 4, 2011 8:36:03 AM
Subject: Press Release: Red Hat to Acquire Gluster

10/4/11
Business Wire

Red Hat to Acquire Gluster

* Ushers in New Era of Software-Based Open Storage Platforms to Unify
On-Premise and Cloud
* Adds Scale-Out Management of Unstructured Data to Red Hat Portfolio
with Gluster’s Disruptive Open Source Storage Solutions

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's
leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today
announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Gluster,
Inc., a leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions for
standardizing the management of unstructured data. With this
acquisition, Red Hat will define a new baseline for how enterprise IT
manages the explosion of big data, whether deployed on-premise or
spanning into the public cloud. Red Hat is expanding into a critical
part of enterprise infrastructure, enabling it to deliver open storage
solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era
of computing.

“The explosion of big data and the new paradigm of cloud computing are
converging, forcing IT to re-think storage investments that are
cost-effective, manageable and scale for the future,” said Brian
Stevens, CTO and vice president, Worldwide Engineering at Red Hat. “Our
customers are looking for software-based storage solutions that manage
their file-based data on-premise, in the cloud and bridging between the
two. With unstructured data growth (such as log files, virtual machines,
email, audio, video and documents), the 90's paradigm of forcing
everything into expensive, single-system DBMS residing on an internal
corporate SAN has become unwieldy and impractical.”

Founded in 2005, Gluster's goal was to simplify storage using open
source software and commodity hardware. The heart of Gluster is
GlusterFS, a software-only, scale-out storage system. It allows
enterprises to combine large numbers of commodity storage and compute
resources into a high-performance, centrally-managed and
globally-accessible storage pool. By combining commodity economics with
a scale-out approach, customers can deploy abundant storage without
compromising on cost, performance and manageability. Gluster has emerged
as an innovative open source leader, relied upon by companies such as
Pandora, Box.net and Samsung to efficiently manage large volumes of data.

"We are extremely pleased to be joining Red Hat," said AB Periasamy,
co-founder and CTO of Gluster. "We believe this is a perfect combination
of technologies, strategies and cultures and is a great development for
our customers, employees, investors and community. Gluster started off
with a goal to be the Red Hat of storage. Now, we are the storage of Red
Hat.”

"Enterprises and service providers have struggled to manage their
rapidly expanding unstructured data stores with conventional storage
systems," said Henry Baltazar, senior analyst of The 451 Group. "The
scale out storage technology and expertise Red Hat is gaining from the
acquisition of Gluster will serve as a powerful foundation for future
public, private and hybrid storage clouds."

Red Hat has agreed to acquire Gluster, a privately-held company, for
approximately $136 million in cash. As part of the transaction, Red Hat
will also assume unvested Gluster equity outstanding on the closing date
and issue certain equity retention incentives. The transaction is
expected to close in October, subject to customary closing conditions.

The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s
revenue this fiscal year but should begin to grow next year based on a
subscription revenue model. Red Hat is reaffirming its Q3 and fiscal
2012 guidance, provided on its September 21, 2011 earnings call, for
revenue, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP earnings per share and
operating cash flow, assuming the exchange rates of September 20, 2011
identified on the call. Non-GAAP operating margin and EPS estimates
exclude the impact of stock-based compensation and amortization of
acquisition-related intangibles. Stock-based compensation and
amortization expenses are estimated to increase by $1 million and $2
million, respectively, per quarter.

“Industry analysts estimate the total addressable market for
unstructured data storage at approximately $4 billion and growing. This
is an exciting new area of potential growth for Red Hat and one in which
we intend to invest aggressively,” said Charlie Peters, EVP and CFO of
Red Hat. “While we expect Red Hat's operating income to continue to grow
nicely next year based on revenue growth, we expect that non-GAAP
operating margin for fiscal year 2013 could be approximately 150 basis
points lower than fiscal 2012 as we make additional investments to help
realize Gluster's potential. At that level, Red Hat's operating margin
will still be among the highest compared to other high-growth software
companies when they were at the $1 billion revenue stage,” he added. Red
Hat expects to offer additional guidance for fiscal year 2013 on its
fourth quarter earnings call.

To learn more about this announcement, join Red Hat and Gluster
executives for a webcast that will broadcast live at 12pm ET on October
4, 2011. To join the live webcast or to watch the replay, visit
http://www-waa-akam.thomson-webcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=a91698cb4345fbc4096be08519bb66f3&portal_id=af9b227bf07c733390c2738ee0330646.

For more information about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news,
more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.




-- 
Kerri Catallozzi
Red Hat Corporate Marketing
Public Relations
o: 919.754.4268
c: 919.801.8264