Brocade Communications strayed from its switching roots on Monday, announcing the acquisition of software maker NuView. With the purchase, Brocade joins HP and Veritas as companies that have also acquired NuView over the years (more on that later).

Brocade shelled out $60m for the file virtualization start-up. NuView's main claim to fame arrives via the StorageX product, which provides a global namespace stretching across numerous NAS (network attached storage) boxes. This software will be sold with Brocade's Tapestry family of management products that includes a wide area file services tool, an application resource manager, and a data migration manager.

NuView claims NetApp as a prominent and long-standing customer. The two announced a deal back in 2002 to have NetApp offer StorageX with its boxes. Of course, NetApp, EMC and others have been working on similar technology of their own for some time or have purchased start-ups to get the global namespace job done.

Brocade hopes to sell NuView to and with the entire cast of NAS storage characters, including NetApp, EMC, Sun Microsystems, HP, IBM and Hitachi.

To have a bit of fun, travel over here and do a Ctrl-F for "Track Record". You'll find that the NuView name has been recycled a couple of times in the server and storage industries. HP bought NuView and its ManageX product in 1997, and Veritas bought NuView and its ClusterX product in 1999.

It would seem that CEO Rahul Mehta has found a successful formula for attracting large vendors. Just call your company NuView and slap an "X" on the back of a common server/storage term. This strategy helps save on business card, promotional pen and notebook costs.

NuView claims about 400 customers. ®