Dell picked up clustered NAS pro Exanet, finally signing the dotted line after months of speculation. The US $12 million purchase follows reports that the company was going into receivership in December after failing to repay a US $10 million loan from Kreos Capital.

My latest meeting with the boys on the strategy committee caused me to reappraise a few things. Our biggest threat is HP, but we got a real problem growing this company. We need to think bigger.

HP woke up the IT world this morning by announcing their acquisition of IBRIX, a maker of scale-out file servers. The purchase will presumably be integrated with HP’s existing clustered file system technology acquired with PolyServe in 2007. The move demonstrates HP’s commitment to continue to be a major player in the enterprise storage market.