HP to pick up storage management company

Hewlett-Packard has agreed to acquire AppIQ, a provider of storage management technologies, for an undisclosed amount, the companies said Monday.

The deal builds upon a partnership already forged between the two companies. Since March, HP has been selling AppIQ's StorageAuthority suite through its own server and storage management product lines.

"We share a common vision for storage area management, a commitment to open standards and a belief in the role that multivendor storage management software plays in creating an adaptive enterprise," Ash Ashutosh, AppIQ's executive vice president, chief technology officer and co-founder, said in a statement.

AppIQ's products monitor and report on the health of storage servers and provide tools for analyzing storage resources. The StorageAuthority suite is designed to simplify storage management and cut costs by supporting hardware made by multiple vendors and delivering management tools through a Web browser.

Based in Burlington, Mass., AppIQ has 135 employees and approximately 250 customers, according to a press release.

The companies expect to wrap up the transaction in the next 45 days, after which AppIQ's offerings will become part of HP's StorageWorks division.