Storage titan EMC has quietly acquired Texas-based iWave Software, whose Automator suite streamlines the provisioning and management of storage systems, data centers and private clouds. No price was mentioned.

It will be another Storage-as-a-Service ornament for EMC's Advanced Storage Division.

EMC uses iWave widgetry in its VMAX Service Provider Platform. Users can provision, remove and extend block storage for Linux, VMware ESX servers and VMware clusters.

The news got out through a posting by iWave Brent Rhymes, who's of course "thrilled" with the acquisition.

He says iWave has collaborated with EMC "for years" and he figures that "iWave established itself as an early market leader in storage automation - driven in large part through partnership with EMC. Now, as part of EMC, iWave is poised for some truly exciting and exponential growth in what is becoming one of the hottest storage software capabilities."

His allusion to "drawing attention from the storage industry's biggest players" appears to be Rhymes' way of saying he did business with EMC competitors Dell and NetApp.

He said he and the iWave board saw the takeover as "the right and logical next step in what has been a very successful partnership with EMC."

iWave, which can manage EMC, Dell and NetApp storage from a single portal, was spun off from Skywire Software LLC in March 2008 when Rhymes moved from being general manager of iWave Integrator to CEO of iWave Software. A few months later Oracle bought Skywire Software sans iWave.