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HP gets the LEFTovers!

October 1st, 2008 by Steven Schwartz
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     For sometime, LeftHand Networks has been popping up on the radar as an iSCSI solution provider.  I have written about them in past postings..  Today is was announced that HP will acquire the Boulder, CO based iSCSI software vendor for approximately $360 Million.

 

 

 

 

    You can read the press release here. 

HP has agreed to purchase LeftHand Networks for $360 million in cash, subject to certain purchase price adjustments.

Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks is privately held and headquartered in Boulder, Colo. It has 215 employees and more than 500 resellers and distributors worldwide. The company has more than 11,000 installations across 3,000 different customers.

 

    The part I find interesting, have been the other iSCSI product companies that have been brought public or have been acquired in the past year.  Of course, most notable to me would be Dell’s acquisition of Equallogic for $1.4 Billion.  There was a point in time that LeftHand Networks and Equallogic were considered “equal” competitors, clearly the purchase prices show that was far from the case.

 

     I wish my friends that are at LeftHand the best of luck over the next 3 months while this deal gets closed.

 

 

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Posted in Enterprise, SAN and NAS, Start-up | 6 Comments »

  • Pingback: HP Picks Up iSCSI Contender, LeftHand Networks - Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

  • http://blog.netapp.com/shadeofblue Alex McDonald

    Ah, I see why you posted that comment on my blog. You feel the Dell to LHN comparsion to be unequal, what with EQL costing over 4 times as much.

    HP are a force to be reckoned with, and if they execute on this, then perhaps it might be that Dell paid too much.

  • http://www.thesantechnologist.com Steven J. Schwartz

    No, I was very clear, I stated that the Equallogic to LeftHand comparison was not equal, just as comparing NetApp to BlueArc wouldn’t be a fair comparison.

  • http://blogs.netapp.com/shadeofblue/2008/09/dell-and-pictor.html Alex McDonald

    OK, I stand corrected on the point of scale. But having gobbled up the last independent iSCSI vendor standing, it’s pitching HP directly into the iSCSI market; exactly where Dell has marked out its stall. Size matters, but appearances can be deceptive.

  • http://www.hp.com/storage/blog Calvin Zito

    I’d say looking back over the last 9 months, Dell paid too much for EqualLogic and I’m sure your field is seeing that now based on the competitive pressure from the HP LeftHand SAN solutions.

  • http://www.thesantechnologist.com Steven J. Schwartz

    I find this a very interesting comment. M. Dell himself said the the UK Register that Equallogic product sales were up 4x the revenue of Equallogic’s 2007 fiscal year numbers for Dell’s fiscal 2009 (basically calendar year 2008). From Equallogic’s own S-1 (when the intentions were to go public) Fiscal year 2007 Equallogic booked roughly $180M in revenue, which puts Dell’s revenue from Equallogic at over $750M from this one product line. Given the rate of growth, and the margins associated with the product Dell could easily see 100% return on investment in less than 3 years, I say that is a pretty good investment! The difference between Equallogic and Lefthand has always been about basic product differences, and how the products were brought to market. Remember Dell bought a Hardware based storage product, not a software company like LeftHand is/was.