Adds SAN storage capabilities to Oracle's lineup

Oracle is architecture out its arrangement of accouterments articles with the accretion of accumulator bell-ringer Pillar Data Systems, the aggregation appear Wednesday.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison already has a majority pale in Pillar. As of Wednesday, Pillar had an outstanding $544 actor accommodation with Ellison and his affiliates for money it had adopted in accomplished years, according to a filing fabricated Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "Immediately above-mentioned to the closing of the acquisition, the again outstanding bulk of the Pillar Data Accommodation will be adapted into shares of adopted banal of Pillar Data which will accept a appropriate to assets accruing at an anniversary amount of 1.5%," the filing said.

The accord was engineered by an absolute lath of Oracle lath members, according to a statement.

Pillar makes SAN (storage breadth network) Block I/O accumulator systems, technology Oracle bare to accompaniment its ZFS Accumulator Appliance's NAS (network-attached storage) Book I/O capabilities, according to a presentation certificate on the deal.

Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired aftermost year, resold third-party SAN accumulator products, and it is "critical for Oracle to own a proprietary accumulator asset, abnormally for architecture engineered systems," the certificate stated.

Oracle will go up adjoin the brand of EMC's Clariion articles with the Pillar technology.

Some 600 barter with 1,500 systems are active Pillar articles now, according to Oracle.

Pillar is one of the aftermost actual absolute accumulator vendors afterward a adventurous of contempo deals, such as Dell's accretion of Compellent and Hewlett-Packard's acquirement of 3Par. DVD ripper Mac

The actuality that Ellison has a pale in Pillar larboard the bell-ringer in somewhat of a limbo "and affectionate of took them off the table for an accretion by anyone else," said Forrester Analysis analyst Andrew Reichman.

Pillar's best aspect is the actuality that its accumulator technology can handle block and book assignment simultaneously, Reichman said. "That's become a actual hot category. From that perspective, this gives Oracle a appealing solid comedy in the midrange to small-enterprise unified accumulator space, area they can go head-to-head with NetApp and EMC."

However, Pillar, like any baby company, has beneath assets for analysis and development, Reichman added. "Now with the abounding abetment of Oracle abaft them, hopefully they can advance the money that's bare to advance the artefact into a added able platform."

Oracle is accepted to accord a ample amend on its accumulator action during a webcast Thursday, with appearances from co-president Mark Hurd and John Fowler, controlling carnality admiral of systems.

Since affairs Sun, Oracle has emphasized the actuality that it wants to focus on specialized accouterments systems that run its appliancecomputer application stack, and not go head-to-head with the brand of HP or Dell on article server products.

But the Pillar technology could nonetheless fit into a added general-purpose midmarket action accumulation Sun servers with Pillar accumulator on the aback end, Reichman said.