StorCentric Exits Stealth With Acquisitions Of Drobo, Nexsan

A startup storage company, StorCentric, came out of stealth Tuesday with the news that it has acquired two long-established storage vendors, Drobo and Nexsan.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based StorCentric, which describes itself as a "newly formed customer-centric storage solutions company," appears to be using the acquisitions to introduce itself to the storage industry.

Nexsan and Drobo will remain as intact and independent businesses within StorCentric.

[Related: Nexsan Unity: Unified Primary Storage, File Sync And Share Combined For Secure Data Access]

StorCentric, in a PowerPoint presentation sent to the press, indicated the possibility of further acquisitions going forward. One slide is a list including Drobo, Nexsan, Target 1, Target 2 and Target 3 being shown as working primarily through indirect sales channels.

The company also referred to combined solutions including Drobo and Nexsan. These include hybrid cloud, an integrated management offering, and a future hub-and-spoke architecture with Nexsan at the core and Drobo at the edge.

Spokespeople from StorCentric, Nexsan and Drobo were unavailable to provide further information by press time.

Little is known about StorCentric. The company's CEO is Mihir Shah, who also serves as the CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Drobo. Gary Watson, co-founder of Nexsan, is staying on as the chief technology officer of StorCentric.

Drobo and Nexsan have one key past executive in common. Geoff Barrell served as Drobo's chairman from September 2015 to May 2018, and as chief operating officer at Nexsan from October 2015 to November 2017. Barrell did not respond to a request for further information by press time.

Nexsan is known as a developer of midrange and enterprise storage and was a pioneer as a low-cost provider of dense networked storage with its early development of its ATTABoy, ATTABeast and SATABoy storage lines.

Nexsan's most recent new line of storage was Unity, which combined its NST unified storage platform with its Transporter enterprise file sync and share technology to create an offering that allows business data to be used for easy sharing and collaboration from primary storage without the need to send the data over a cloud.

Nexsan also has a strong storage cloud connection with its Assureon Archive and Assureon Cloud Transfer technologies.

Nexsan in 2014 was acquired by Oakdale, Minn.-based Imation, and in 2016 became the sole asset of Imation when Imation sold off its other assets.

Drobo is best-known for its line of prosumer-focused and consumer-focused storage offerings with attached cloud services, but also has a strong SMB business and counts among customers of its easy-to-use storage offerings such companies as Chevron, 3M, Cisco, ABC and Disney.

Shah, in a prepared statement, said the two components of StorCentric together give the company a wide range of storage technologies.

"Nexsan has a remarkable line of enterprise-class storage solutions that address complex business requirements while Drobo has best-in-class prosumers and SMBs. Both are critical components of StorCentric," Shah said in that statement.