Hitachi Data Systems is putting technology from its BlueArc and Parascale acquisitions to work in its private storage cloud and Big Data plans.

HDS today upgraded its Cloud Service for Private File Tiering, and rolled out its Cloud Service for File Serving and Cloud Service for Microsoft SharePoint Archiving as part of its infrastructure cloud strategy.

HDS also outlined its vision for its infrastructure, content and information clouds. BlueArc’s NAS products will provide file storage capabilities in the infrastructure and content clouds while Parascale Cloud Storage (PCS) fits into the content and information clouds.

HDS acquired Parascale for an undisclosed price in August 2010 and bought its long-time NAS OEM partner BlueArc for $600 million last month.

HDS’ strategy is to make its content cloud a single platform for data indexing, search and discovery.

HDS rolled out its Private File Tiering service in June 2010 for tiering data from a NetApp filer to the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). Now it adds HCP support for EMC NAS. The file service and SharePoint cloud services let users share files and SharePoint from different geographic locations over a LAN, WAN or MAN. These services require a Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) caching device in remote sites or branches to tier data to a central location that houses the HCP.

Tanya Loughlin, HDS’ manager of cloud product marketing, said these services already exist but now HDS is packaging them as a cloud that it will manage for customers. The cloud services include a management portal to access billing, payment and chargeback information.

“It’s a private cloud service,” Loughlin said “Customers don’t have to pay for hardware. They pay on a per-gigabyte basis. This is a way to augment staff and push some of the less-used data to us. We’ll manage it.”

Pricing is not available yet. “We are finalizing that now,” she said. “The products that fit into these services are already priced, so this is a bundling exercise now.”

HDS plans to tackle Big Data through its information cloud strategy by integrating analytics tools and processes into PCS. PCS aggregates Linux servers into one virtual storage appliance for structured and unstructured data. Loughlin said HDS will also use Parascale, BlueArc NAS and the HDS Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) SAN array to connect data sets and identify patterns for business intelligence in the health, life sciences and energy research fields.

By Sonia Lelii, Senior News Editor

Hitachi Data Systems earlier today announced it has scooped up its OEM partner BlueArc for $600 million, and hours after the news broke, not many seemed to be taken aback by the acquisition that gives HDS its own NAS platform.

“Little surprise, big deal,” said Arun Taneja, founder, president and consulting analyst for Taneja Group. “BlueArc has one large OEM partner, and Hitachi has never had a NAS box to speak of. They had a poor NAS offering until they signed a deal with BlueArc. The company has become more and more important to HDS. Hitachi is highly dependent on these guys, and HDS is BlueArc’s lifeblood.”

SAN vendor HDS and BlueArc have had a successful five-year OEM relationship: HDS sold BlueArc’s SiliconFS file system with its storage arrays to give HDS platforms NAS capability. BlueArc was founded in 1998 and it had refiled for an IPO in June this year. The company initially filed for an IPO in September 2007 but withdrew after the housing bubble burst. The 13-year-old company has had a long stint as a startup, losing a total of $230.3 million since it began shipping storage systems in 2001. “BlueArc has had a lot of ups and down over the years,” said Taneja. “This current management team has steadied the ship and slowed down the bleeding.”

The company helps accelerate filer I/O in HPC environments with its enterprise-level Titan Series Servers and midrange Mercury Series Servers. It also offers three storage arrays, data protection software, file system software, and virtual and tiered storage products. Taneja said BlueArc’s filer products came with a high cost premium compared with market leader NetApp because the company designed and built its own NFS ASICs. “Their average cost is definitely higher than NetApp,” said Taneja. “It’s the only company I know of that does NFS in ASIC. BlueArc has a solid product.”

This deal follows several high-profile purchases of storage startups last year, including Hewlett-Packard’s $2.4 billion purchase of 3PAR, Isilon Systems’ sale to EMC for $2.25 billion and Dell’s $820 million purchase of Compellent Technologies.

Two weeks after solid-state storage vendor Fusion-io went public, clustered NAS provider BlueArc Friday registered with the Securites and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a public offering. Nexsan already has an IPO filing on the books and SAN vendor Xiotech’s CEO Alan Atkinson said he is looking to follow Fusion-io’s lead and go public.

BlueArc has gone this far before. It filed for an IPO in 2007 but never followed through because of poor market conditions.

BlueArc, which benefits from an OEM deal with Hitachi Data Systems, has never had a profitable quarter and has lost a total of $230.3 million since it began shipping its storage systems in 2001. Its annual revenue was $74.2 million in 2008, $65.9 million in 2009 and $85.6 million last year, and it lost $19.6 million, $15.8 million and $9.4 million over those years.

In the three months that ended April 30, 2011, BlueArc had revenue of $24.7 million and lost $4.3 million.

The BlueArc filing said the vendor has more than 750 customers with more than 2,000 of its systems deployed.

SAN vendor HDS sells BlueArc’s SiliconFS file system with its storage arrays to give HDS platforms NAS capability. HDS accounted for 41% of BlueArc revenues last year and 45% of its revenues for the quarter ending April 30. BlueArc’s filing said its contract with HDS must be renewed every year. However, Judging from public statements HDS has made, it is happy with the BlueArc relationship.

BlueArc’s filing said it hoped to raise up to $100 million in the IPO. That’s small change compared to some of the storage transactions over the past 12 months. EMC acquired BlueArc competitor Isilon for $2.25 billion last year. Also over the past year, Hewlett-Packard bought 3PAR for $2.35 billion, Dell acquired Compellent for $820 million, and NetApp picked up LSI’s Engenio storage division for $480 million.