EMC bets $2.27 bn on Isilon

Storage giant EMC has agreed to pay US$33.85 (AU$34.25) per share for fellow US storage company, Isilon, at a 29 per cent premium on its Friday's NASDAQ closing price, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The total purchase price would be around US$2.25 billion (AU$2.27 billion).

The acquisition would give the world's largest storage vendor extra capacity to target so-called "Big Data" jobs, according to EMC chief executive Joe Tucci, such as for media streaming, science projects, and oil and gas exploration.

"The unmistakable waves of cloud computing and ‘Big Data' are upon us," Tucci said in a statement.

"Customers are looking for new ways to store, protect, secure and add intelligence to the vast amounts of information they will accumulate over the next decade."

Recent client victories for Isilon include geospatial mapping vendor, ILOOKABOUT, the audio production unit of World Wrestling Entertainment, and content distribution network provider, internap.

EMC expected its family of Atmos cloud storage products would, in conjunction with Isilon's network attached storage (NAS) systems, net it US$1 billion in annual revenues by mid-2012.

Last week EMC also acquired privately held Virtual Tape Library maker, Massachusetts-based Bus-Tech.