BluArc's products are based on the proprietary , which provides a single, unified storage management console that lets applications servers access data via CIFS, NFS and iSCSI protocols.

San Jose-based BlueArc has about 300 employees and last year reported about $85.5 million in sales. Householder said BlueArc has about 1,000 customers, half of which purchased its NAS arrays through HDS.

HDS, a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., is based in Santa Clara, Calif. and has about 3,200 employees. Last year, the parent firm reported $112.4 billion in sales.

HDS sells large data storage systems for mid-size and large corporations.

The company's flagship combines tens to hundreds of disk drives into a single virtual pool of capacity that can be carved up for applications. The system can automatically expand capacity depending on business demands.