SanDisk & Fusion-io Target the SSD Data Center Storage Market

When SanDisk bought Fusion-io for $1.1 billion earlier this month, it acquired more than a solid-state storage company. It gained access to Fusion-io’s big data center customers, like Apple and Facebook.

The data center landscape is changing, with solid-state storage taking a leading role. The stakes are huge as providers of big storage use more and more solid-state technology.

While conventional hard drives are not going away, SSD sales are zooming,
SanDisk, which is well known for producing flash drive technology, caching software, camera cards and more, hopes the Fusion-io deal will help grow its data center business.

“Fusion-io will accelerate our efforts to enable the flash-transformed data center, helping companies better manager increasingly heavy data workloads at a lower total cost of ownership” said Sanjay Mehrotra, President and CEO of SanDisk.

Mehrotra’s counterpart at Fusion-io, Shane Robison, sees a very complementary combo.

“Fusion-io’s innovative hardware and software solutions will be augmented by SanDisk’s worldwide scale and vertical integration, enabling a combined company that can offer an even more compelling value proposition for customers and partners,” Robison said.

Earlier this moth, hard drive powerhouse Seagate purchased Avago Technology’s LSI flash business for $450 million, another signal that consolidation is underway.

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