HPE completes US$1 billion acquisition of Nimble Storage

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has completed the US$1 billion acquisition of all-flash vendor Nimble Storage.

According to HPE, the acquisition of Nimble will expand the company's position in the estimated US$15 billion flash storage market.

HPE expects to create a comprehensive storage portfolio by bringing together Nimble’s predictive flash offerings for the entry to midrange segments with HPE’s scalable midrange to high-end 3PAR solutions, SimpliVity solutions and affordable MSA products.

HPE EVP and general manager for the Enterprise Group Antonio Neri said: "This deal, in combination with our recent acquisitions, helps deliver on our vision of making hybrid IT simple for our customers. Through these strategic investments, we are continuing to strengthen and deepen our portfolio of next generation, software-defined, differentiated solutions that meet the new challenges our customers are facing."

HPE paid US$12.50 per Nimble share in cash.

Nimble, now an owned subsidiary of HPE, was founded in 2007 and had 1300 employees worldwide when the acquisition was announced. The acquisition will add 10,000 Nimble customers to HPE.

In a blog, Nimble Storage chief executive Suresh Vasudevan wrote: "As proud as we are of what we have accomplished, we face a challenge of scale and significant exposure as a standalone storage company. Our aspiration has always been to be an innovation leader, and see our technology deployed in organisations around the globe.  But, as we weighed the opportunities and risks, we concluded that an acquisition makes sense at the right price with the right partner. We believe we’ve found both."

In a Nimble Storage FAQ, HPE said combined HPE and Nimble products would be announced later this year. HPE also assured it would not end any Nimble product line.

The all-flash vendor's total revenue for the 2017 fiscal year was US$402.6 million, up about 25 percent from the US$322.2 million the company reported for FY2016. 

In February 2017, HPE closed the US$650 million acquisition of hyper-converged infrastructure vendor SimpliVity.