EMC Continues SMB Storage Assault With Prisa Acquisition

EMC Prisa Networks

EMC officials on Wednesday said the company acquired Prisa, a privately held supplier of SAN management software for small to midsize SAN environments.

The long-rumored acquisition--EMC's eighth software acquisition in three years--was a cash transaction valued at approximately $20 million.

San Diego-based Prisa has developed a suite of products including VisualSAN Network Manager, which discovers, manages and monitors multi-vendor SAN devices; VisualSAN Configuration Manager, which enables rapid visual identification and isolation of issues within a SAN; VisualSAN Performance Manager, which provides realtime performance monitoring and tracking; and VisualSAN Remote Support Suite, which provides remote support tools for SAN installations.

An EMC spokesperson said the Prisa VisualSAN suite is aimed at entry-level SANs in the Windows space, especially for those companies moving from a direct-attached environment to a SAN for the first time. It is suitable for organizations starting at eight servers or so, the spokesperson said.

EMC plans to keep Prisa's management and engineering teams in place in San Diego and will grow the Prisa organization as needed.

EMC plans to maintain Prisa's current OEM relationships, primarily with Dell, with whom EMC has had a long relationship on the storage hardware side, the spokesperson said. The company will also take the software to clients both direct and via its channel partners, said the spokesperson. Future plans call for upgrade paths to EMC's ControlCenter and SAN Manager applications.

The acquisition is another move on EMC's part to emphasize software. EMC has an R and D budget of $800 million per year, 75 percent of which goes to software, the spokesperson said.