Red Hat has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire storage systems provider Inktank.

Inktank is an open source storage software company with offices located in Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA.

Red Hat believes Inktank technology will allow it to "advance its leadership in open software-defined storage," according to a company FAQ released this week.

The company feels it will be able to offer its customers a "very competitive alternative to traditional proprietary storage systems" from companies like EMC.

"With Red Hat's long history of successfully guiding open source communities for the benefit of all members, the Ceph community can feel confident in a continuation of the vibrant ecosystem Inktank has built well into the future," Red Hat wrote in the FAQ discussing the deal.

Red Hat said the investment made "a lot of sense" due to the size of the storage opportunity.

Inktank was founded in 2012, and its customers include Cisco, CERN, and Deutsche Telekom.

Click here to read the entire FAQ.

 "Red Hat can offer its customers a very competitive alternative to traditional proprietary storage systems from companies like EMC," the company said. "Red Hat will continue to invest, sell, support, and develop Ceph products under the Red Hat name while continuing to work with the community to innovate and drive the Ceph product roadmap. Over the next 1-2 years, Red Hat plans to develop product roadmaps from which Red Hat can derive a range of compatible storage offerings to address the demand for file, block, and object storage."

Red Hat expects the deal to close sometime next month, according to 

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