Oracle is building out its array of hardware products with the acquisition of storage vendor Pillar Data Systems, the company announced Wednesday. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in July, were not disclosed.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison already has a majority stake in Pillar. The deal was engineered by an independent committee of Oracle board members, according to a statement.
Pillar makes SAN (storage area network) Block I/O storage systems, technology Oracle needed to complement its ZFS Storage Appliance's NAS (network-attached storage) File I/O capabilities, according to a presentation document on the deal.
Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired last year, resold third-party SAN storage products, and it is "critical for Oracle to own a proprietary storage asset, especially for building engineered systems," the document stated.
Oracle will go up against the likes of EMC's Clariion products with the Pillar technology.
Some 600 customers with 1,500 systems are running Pillar products now, according to Oracle.
Oracle is expected to give a broad update on its storage strategy during a webcast Thursday, with appearances from co-president Mark Hurd and John Fowler, executive vice president of systems.