HP needs a massively scalable file storage solution for next IT challenges

All of us remember Cars movie, this fantastic Pixar production was realized with Ibrix file storage software solution installed on an impressive storage configuration. Ibrix FusionFS is for sure one of the few product available on the market capable to deliver a high sustained throughput need by this segment and environment. With this software acquisition, HP did a good move, Ibrix solution is a well respected and proven product used by many verticals who need high performance file I/O such as media and movie studios, HPC or important web service provider such as Alexa.
The solution behind all these success is Ibrix FusionFS, a scale-out file storage software based on a patented segmented file system, which aggregates potentially hundreds of storage servers together and delivers a amazing aggregated bandwidth, some configurations demonstrate 1TB/s !!

This move is a new illustration and confirmation that the market is pushed by the file or unstructured data - everything is a file today - and consumers contribute heavily to this trend. Ibrix is also the inventor of the Cirrus cloud storage service based on REST, http and of course backed by FusionFS. It's an alternative offering to Amazon S3 in term of technology not in term of available service as Ibrix doesn't offer any Amazon like IT services. It will be a good idea for HP to promote this offering through Telecommunication provider or ISP vendor to build and market this Online Storage Service powered by HP/Ibrix, or build his own solution with EDS in house now, something like the Symantec current push with FileStore and next year with S4 (Symantec Secure Scalable Storage) or by players such as ParaScale who tries to address that need also.

But we have some questions as HP, the king of oem, made several time bad integration job and open the door to competition, sometimes the product disappears but validates the area, and other players could be in a better position to market their own solution. Among them, BlueArc, Exanet, Isilon, NetApp, Panasas or ParaScale with some pretty good technologies approaches and alternatives. We'll see, HP has to confirm the move as the right one...