Hewlett Packard Enterprise To Buy Nutanix Rival For $650 Million

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. announced Tuesday it has agreed to acquire SimpliVity for $650 million in cash, giving it a stronger offering in the growing market for tech infrastructure that combines data-storage and computing. SimpliVity is one of the leaders in hyperconvergence, recently listed by Forrester Research one of the top companies in the field along with Nutanix Inc. , which went public last year and is currently worth more than $4 billion on the open market. "More and more customers are looking for solutions that bring them secure, highly resilient, on-premises infrastructure at cloud economics," HPE Chief Executive Meg Whitman said in a statement. "That's exactly where we're focused." HPE said the move would add to earnings in the first full fiscal year after it closes, which the company expects in the second quarter of its current fiscal year, which began Nov. 1. HPE shares were quiet in late trading following the announcement, but Nutanix shares fell 0.7%.