On January 19, 2017, Exablox, a young data storage system company, announced that it is being acquired by StorageCraft, a family of companies, founded in 2003, that makes backup  and recovery software.

Neuralytix predicted that there would be considerable consolidation in 2017 during our Priorities 2017 webinar. 19 days into the year, and already SimpliVity and Exablox have been acquired!

The acquisition of Exablox by a backup and recovery software vendor is both surprising and, in our opinion, disappointing. In an age where company valuation values software over hardware, this acquisition seems to go in direct contradiction to that adage. It is disappointing, because Neuralytix Exablox, as a standalone storage systems vendor has a lot to offer, and we fear that this acquisition will relegate it to a simple endpoint for backup software.

What made Exablox unique was its underlying operating system. It was object-storage ready. Our understanding of Exablox was that it took an object-based storage paradigm, and translated it effectively to file and block protocols. Exablox’s products were price-friendly to the mid-market and to the small and medium business (SMB) market. Its unique ability to cluster itself also gave it considerable opportunity for growing businesses with multiple locations to have the same level of enterprise capabilities as more well-known storage systems at a price that was compatible to the SMB market.

Ultimately, only time will tell what StorageCraft will do with Exablox. At Neuralytix, we hope that Exablox will continue its development roadmap, and that StorageCraft will bring additional selling resources to extend the success Exablox has had in the marketplace.