Dell looks to buy clustered storage vendor Exanet

It's looking to extend storage sales into NAS systems

Looking to extend its reach in the storage space, Dell Inc. today said it has put a bid in to purchase clustered storage vendor Exanet Inc. for an as-yet undisclosed amount.

According to a Dell spokesman, the company has submitted an offer to purchase Israel-based Exanet's assets, primarily patents and other intellectual property with court approval through a Chapter 7 liquidation in Israel.

"The transaction has not yet been approved by the Israel court, so we won't speculate on its completion or timing," the spokesman said in an e-mail response to a Computerworld inquiry.

Exanet sells a Linux-based clustered network-attached storage management software called the ExaStore.

Dell has had a long-standing reseller and manufacturing relationship with EMC Corp., selling its Clariion line of mid-range storage arrays. More recently, Dell began selling its own line of iSCSI-based low-end and midrange storage arrays after it purchased EqualLogic Corp. in 2007 .

Exanet's U.S. headquarters is located in New York and the company also has offices in Europe and Japan. Exanet filed for bankruptcy last month under Chapter 11.