Microsoft continues its push toward the cloud with the acquisition of Avere Systems, the leading startup in hybrid solutions for big enterprises who want to keep their computing process by saving and retrieving files in the cloud, keep other sensitive process in-house, and other high-performance computing scenarios. Not amount was disclosed, but Avere Systems has raised a total of $97 million in different series of rounds, and was last valued in $175 million by Funderbeam.
“Avere uses an innovative combination of file system and caching technologies to support the performance requirements for customers who run large-scale compute workloads,” Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft for Azure wrote in a blog post. “By bringing together Avere’s storage expertise with the power of Microsoft’s cloud, customers will benefit from industry-leading innovations that enable the largest, most complex high-performance workloads to run in Microsoft Azure.”
Microsoft’s Zander also assured that Avere’s team will join Azure to help improve customer experience and work in supporting all third-party cloud providers.
On Avere’s end, its CEO, Ron Bianchini Jr., wrote in a separate blog post that, “Avere and Microsoft both recognize that there are many ways for Enterprises to leverage data center resources and the cloud,” and that its shared vision, “is to continue our focus on all of Avere’s use cases—in the datacenter, in the cloud and in hybrid cloud storage and cloud bursting environments. Tighter integration with Azure will result in a much more seamless experience for our customers.”
Satya Nadella has made his priority as Microsoft CEO the push of the software giant into \cloud computing, putting in place a strategy that prioritizes the intelligent cloud platform as one of the company’s key investment areas. Microsoft has made another cloud-focused acquisition with Nadella—a former head of cloud and enterprise group at the company—and has struck gold. In October, Nadella’s company revealed that its annualized revenue rate for cloud services passed $20 billion, 8 months earlier than predicted three years ago by Microsoft.
Avere was founded in 2008 in Pittsburgh, Penn. and has among its investors Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS), competitors of Microsoft Azure. Even though the companies involved in the acquisition have assured they will continue to serve clients, it is unclear if this acquisition will result in any kind of movement in the cloud services market. The most predictable course is Microsoft strengthening its position.
