Storage giant EMC has reportedly made moves on another Middle Eastern storage startup, by offering between $200-300 million to acquire Scale IO.
According to sources quoted in a report on Israeli news site Calcalist, the deal is in the pipeline, but at the time of writing - neither party would comment on a prospective acquisition.
If the speculation turns out to be true, ScaleIO will be the second storage startup EMC has acquired in recent years, after it splashed out on flash storage player XtremIO in 2012.
It would also mark another move by the vendor into the storage management software space.
In this vein, at last month's EMC World conference in Las Vegas, the vendor took the wraps off its ViPR Controller, which is designed to provide IT administrators with a self-service portal where they can view the storage resources they have available to provision applications and services.
EMC has been heavily investing in the Israel for some time now, having acquired several firms in the country. It also opened a research and development centre there in 2011.
The ScaleIO software allows users to group together and pool server storage so that it can be managed in the same way as a virtual SAN.
The company was set up in 2011, and counts Greylock and Norwest Venture Partners among its financial backers.
IT Pro contacted EMC for comment on this story, but was told they do not comment on rumour or speculation.
