Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Emulex said Tuesday it reached a definitive agreement to acquire Roseville, Calif.-based Sierra Logic for US$180 million to expand its position in the embedded storage components market.

Mike Smith, Emulex's executive vice president for worldwide marketing, characterized Sierra Logic as a leading provider of bridges, routers and Serial ATA (SATA) drives -- the embedded storage infrastructure that Emulex has been targeting. The key objective is to accelerate revenue growth potential and help Emulex grow the market from $1.4 billion to $2.7 billion in 2009, he said.

The acquisition will combine two suppliers of network storage components and may improve the reliability of storage networks that enterprise customers depend on.

Sierra's line of embedded bridges and routers will join Emulex's portfolio of embedded switches and multiple protocol I/O controllers. The combination will make Emulex more competitive in selling to storage system makers, Smith said. Emulex's current customers include Sun Microsystems Inc., Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Network Appliance Inc.

"There is always a trend toward integration, and you can offer more integrated solutions the more pieces you provide. It makes you more of a single, trusted supplier," Smith said.