Today, I am pleased to announce Dell’s intent to acquire Compellent, a fast-growing, global leader in Enterprise storage that automates the movement and management of data. This marks another step in our journey toward putting our customers first, aligning our strategy with their goals for success. By complementing our already comprehensive storage portfolio, Compellent introduces an architecture that can actively, intelligently manage data at a more granular level to cut cost, time and risk for our customers’ businesses. Dell has been executing this since last March with Virtual Era conversation.
Over the last two years, we have acquired technologies that work behind the scenes with intelligence to abstract the complex and provide true business value to our end users. This was certainly true with EqualLogic and was illustrated with the acquisitions of Exanet and Ocarina. One similarity across all of these acquisitions is the ability to address customers’ data management issues. All of these line up with our four family tenants:
- Automation – always online, zero steps for expanded capacity and performance
- Optimization – keep more data on less storage; slash management, power/cooling costs
- Scalability – grow capacity and performance without complexity or pain
- Virtualization – integration with industry-leading virtualization solutions
Don’t forget that Compellent pioneered and patented automated tiered storage that moves data to its optimal location based on how frequently it is accessed. This automated tiering is advanced because of its granularity, ability to tier across drive types and RAID types and the sophisticated way it dynamically moves the most active data to the fastest, outer edges of each drive (called Fast Track) for the highest performance. Also, Compellent’s Live Volume technology is built into every array so that a user can easily move any LUN between arrays (either local or remote) while it’s being accessed (think vMotion for a volume) all the while being both non-disruptive and transparent to the user.
All of these industry-leading capabilities meet our customers’ foundational requirement that storage technologies be straight-forward and easy-to-use while advancing their ability to be more productive. When you combine that with Compellent’s flexible, multiprotocol approach, their unified platform that integrates SAN, NAS, primary and secondary storage and their perpetual software licensing, Dell will continue to offer solutions that are open and flexible to adapt to dynamic customer needs and emerging technologies without lock-in to avoid charging a tax each time customers wish to use emerging drive types, use a range of interconnect options or upgrade to tomorrow’s technologies.
For even more on this, check out Jennifer's post, and keep in touch with us as we build out this opportunity to bring more efficiency and productivity to data centers worldwide. I’m thrilled to start this next phase of our vision!
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In connection with the proposed transaction, Compellent will file a proxy statement with the SEC. Additionally, Compellent and Dell will file other relevant materials in connection with the proposed acquisition of Compellent by Dell pursuant to the terms of the merger agreement. INVESTORS AND STOCKHOLDERS OF COMPELLENT ARE ADVISED TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED WITH THE SEC WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE, BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE MERGER AND THE PARTIES THERETO. Investors and stockholders may obtain free copies of the proxy statement and other documents filed by the parties (when available), at the SEC’s Web site at www.sec.gov or at Compellent’s Web site at www. compellent.com/investors. The proxy statement and such other documents may also be obtained, when available, for free from Compellent by directing such request to Investor Relations, 7625 Smetana Lane, Eden Prairie, MN 55344-3712, telephone: (415) 896-2005. Compellent, Dell and their respective directors, executive officers and other members of management and employees, under SEC rules, may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Compellent's stockholders in connection with the proposed transaction. Information concerning the interests of these persons will be set forth in the proxy statement relating to the transaction when it becomes available.