Sphere 3D Corp. (ANY)

[ral4]

nice article on recent Dell/Nutanix agreement

http://www.crn.com/news/storage/300073226/hyper-converged-infrastructure-blockbuster-dell-to-oem-nutanix-software.htm

Nutanix makes converged appliances, that combines compute and storage, and is now said to be worth a BILLION DOLLARS.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2014/01/14/nutanix-101m-round-unicorn/

This is turning into a hot new market because it simplifies cloud architecture, making it much easier for enterprises to order and implement, requiring less technical staff.... like adding Lego blocks.

"We'll be offering to the market a converged appliance with compute and storage in scalable bricks,"

and from their website

The TCO of internal cloud creation, usage and maintenance is often larger than one initially expect. Nutanix helped us bring this down significantly and the NX-3000 series continues this trend of savings through better density, lower latency, and keeping the simplicity. For us, at scale, simplicity is key.
- Drew Trieger, Virtualization Architect, eBay

http://www.nutanix.com

Nutanix (and similar companies like SimpliVity) have been achieving remarkable success expanding the virtualization market with their converged appliance approach and is a hugely positive sign for Sphere, who also intend to take this approach... except that the intellectual property that will sit in our converged appliance should be FAR FAR more valuable.

Lots of untapped territory that to date has been out of reach for Citrix/VMware etc due to cost and complexity.

jmo