[excerpted from today’s edition of Smart Tech Investor]

It takes plenty to shake up the enterprise storage market and the firmly entrenched legacy vendors. The competitive path is lined with many failed upstarts and smaller players that tried, without much success, to cause any significant disruption. It’s a tough battleground.

However, Nimble Storage (NMBL), a provider of a flash-optimized hybrid storage platform, looks to have the formula to win meaningful market share—offering performance, capacity and differentiated software in a cost-efficient package.

I think Nimble’s disruptive nature (62% of bookings from new accounts), healthy revenue growth (expected to average 61% this year and next), increased presence at the high end and reasonable gross margin outlook could make it attractive as an M&A target for any number of legacy vendors (including NetApp, EMC and even Cisco Systems).

Nimble Storage is a ‘Buy’ in the Next Wave Portfolio up to $29.