Oracle to buy Larry Ellison majority owned Pillar Data Systems

Software and hardware systems provider Oracle Corp today said that it will buy Pillar Data Systems, a privately held storage technology firm that is majority owned by Oracle's own chief executive officer, Larry Ellison.

Since Pillar Data is majority owned by Ellison, the evaluation and negotiation of the deal was led by an independent committee of Oracle's board of directors, to eliminate any con flict of interest between Elliso n and Oracle.

The transaction is structured as a 100 per cent earn-out with no up-front payment. Oracle does not expect that the amount of the earn-out or its potential impact will be material to Oracle's results of operations or financial position.

San Jose, California-based Pillar Data is a leading provider of innovative and highly scalable SAN Block I/O storage systems that provide exceptional performance scaling characteristics with patented Quality of Service.

The company has nearly 600 customers across 24 countries.

''The acquisition of Pillar Data Systems provides Oracle with a compelling SAN storage architecture that complements our core strengths,'' said John Fowler, executive vice president of Systems at Oracle. ''Customers can optimize the value of their Oracle applications, database, middleware and operating system software by running on Oracle's storage solutions.''

''Pillar Data Systems has spent the last decade building truly world-class storage technologies,'' said Mike Workman, chairman and CEO, Pillar Data Systems. ''We are excited to benefit from the scale and reach of Oracle to help continue to build innovative and optimized storage systems.''