Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it has acquired the assets and technology of Permabit Technology Corporation, a software provider for data deduplication, compression and thin provisioning. With the addition of Permabit’s data deduplication and compression capabilities to the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat will be able to allow enterprise digital transformation through more efficient storage options.

As more enterprises move towards adopting the efficiencies offered by digital technologies like Linux containers and cloud computing, being able to run these services and store the resulting data requires new storage needs outside of what is offered by traditional storage technologies. Storage efficiency is a key piece in addressing these needs, particularly with the development of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) which combines storage and compute onto a single x86 server. Enterprise-class, open source solutions can assist to address the storage challenges posed by these digitally transformative technologies by using software to increase the amount of storage available to applications without increasing the amount of physical storage.
 
Red Hat can now bring powerful data deduplication and compression features into Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself with Permabit’s technology, which will also enhance capabilities across Red Hat’s hybrid cloud and storage technologies, including Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Storage. Red Hat plans to open source Permabit’s technology, as it stays consistent with its commitment to delivering fully open source solutions and upstream-first innovation. This will enable customers to use a single, supported and fully-open platform to drive storage efficiency, without having to rely on heterogeneous tools or customized and poorly-supported operating systems.
 
The transaction is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s guidance for its second fiscal quarter ending Aug. 31, 2017, or fiscal year ending Feb. 28, 2018.