HP announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks.

LeftHand Networks' solutions enable midsize companies and remote offices or branches of large corporations to easily and cost-effectively protect critical business data. HP has agreed to purchase LeftHand Networks for $360 million in cash, subject to certain purchase price adjustments.

Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks is privately held and headquartered in Boulder, Colo. It has 215 employees and more than 500 resellers and distributors worldwide. The company has more than 11,000 installations across 3,000 different customers.

A pioneer of iSCSI SAN technology, LeftHand Networks delivers scalable storage software on industry-standard hardware that supports existing technology environments. LeftHand Networks' portfolio extends HP virtualization solutions to the mid market with software that runs on both existing storage and industry-standard server hardware, reducing training time and overall complexity. As a result, companies can move to a SAN for significantly lower cost, manage their data more easily, and scale their storage infrastructures incrementally as their businesses grow.

Additionally, for certain virtualized environments, LeftHand Networks' intelligent cloning technology can reduce the amount of disk space required for storage by up to 97 percent, while its thin provisioning features reduce power consumption by minimizing the over-provisioning of storage.

In addition, LeftHand Networks also features advanced data replication technology with bandwidth management and failover protection. This makes it ideal for backup and disaster recovery operations between remote offices and a central location.

With the addition of LeftHand Networks, HP will add midrange offerings to its suite of iSCSI solutions. Customer needs at the low end of the market will be met with the HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System (AiO) and HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) product lines. The high end will be addressed by the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) line. Customers will further benefit since LeftHand Networks' solutions are already certified to work with a wide range of HP products, including HP ProLiant servers ( http://www.hp.com/go/proliant), HP BladeSystem infrastructure ( http://www.hp.com/go/bladesystem), HP ProCurve Networking ( http://www.procurve.com/) and HP Insight Control management software.

"Customers need a faster, less complex and more economical route to storage networking to better protect their critical business data," said Dave Roberson, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division, HP. "The acquisition of LeftHand Networks significantly expands our storage portfolio, enabling HP to deliver customers an expanded suite of storage functionality, scalable capacity and interconnect options for every budget and performance requirement. With our strong channel and leading position in the industry-standard server market, we are ideally positioned to deliver this technology to customers worldwide."

"Joining with HP is a natural fit for our customers and channel partners, giving them an expanded portfolio of server, storage and networking products and services that are already supported by LeftHand Networks' solutions," said Bill Chambers, chief executive officer, LeftHand Networks. "The combination of LeftHand Networks' virtualization technologies with HP's has the power to significantly accelerate server consolidation projects by making the deployment of shared storage much easier and more cost-effective."

The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to be completed in HP's first fiscal quarter of 2009. Following completion, the business will be integrated into the HP StorageWorks division within the Technology Solutions Group at HP.