When I initially saw online that HPE was acquiring Plexxi, I wasn’t sure what the overall play was. Plexxi is definitely past being just a buzzy startup. As Tom Hollingsworth said on the Gestalt IT Rundown this past week, they were kind of doing IBN before the term was in vogue.
After seeing their press announcement, the acquisition makes two things abundantly clear. One, HPE is serious about HCI. They already have SimpliVity in the fold after their acquisition in early 2017. With Plexxi, HPE really can offer a compelling combination of compute, storage and data fabric networking in a discrete package. Of course, the secret sauce will be rolling that into a single management and support interface. But HPE definitely now has the IP in house to build that.
More intriguing is that HPE also plans to roll Plexxi into Synergy, their composable infrastructure solution. After basically defining the market for composable with Synergy, the Plexxi DC fabric should prove a shot in the arm. While Composable Infrastructure still feels like a nascent market, there’s a lot of potential there. Companies like Liqid have an interesting PCIe approach to the category. While HPE Synergy is basically synonymous with the category at this point, the acquisition shows that they’re not content to just let it sit. Composable may always be a niche solution, but I’m sure HPE would prefer to own it by themselves.
Packet Pushers comments:
HPE also didn’t have much to say about whether Plexxi would operate as a standalone brand within HPE, like Aruba, or be subsumed into the larger organization, writing that it would provide more updates after the close of the acquisition at the end of July.
Read more at: HPE Acquires Plexxi For HCI, Composable Infrastructure
