HPE and Cray have announced an agreement that HPE will acquire Cray for a total of $1.3 billion. The acquisition seeks to strengthen HPE's HPC (High Performance Computing) position and give the company access to technologies to better meet the needs of today's businesses.
The HPC segment will increase from $28 billion in 2018 to $35 billion in 2021 according to estimates: the expected growth is 9 percent per year. More than $4 billion will be spent on Exascale projects over the next five years, and it is precisely in this area that Cray will be included.
Cray currently offers XC and CS line supercomputers, as well as the Shasta platform of the next generation. These systems can handle all major HPC tasks, ranging from modeling and simulation to AI and data analysis. Cray systems also take advantage of connection and storage solutions for high-performance computing scenarios.
"This is an incredible opportunity to bring Cray's cutting-edge technology together with HPE's product portfolio and distribution to provide integrated solutions and unique supercomputer technology for customers of all sizes to meet the full spectrum of calculation needs," said Peter Ungaro, Cray's president and CEO. "HPE and Cray share a commitment to innovation that puts the customer at the center and aims to create a global leader for the future of HPC and AI." In the future, the combination of Cray and HPE portfolios will lead to services such as HPE Greenlake (HPC as a service) and a wider range of products available to both companies ' customers.
It is expected that the acquisition will be complete in the last quarter of the current year, that is, in the first quarter of HPE's fiscal year 2020.