Need for Speed: Violin Memory Acquires GridIron

Violin Memory announced  it has completed the acquisition of application acceleration company GridIron Systems.  GridIron solutions accelerate he performance of a wide range of enterprise applications including online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehouses, virtualization and big data analytics.

“The acquisition of GridIron Systems complements and expands Violin Memory’s strategy of offering memory-based solutions that accelerate business critical applications while optimizing IT infrastructures,” said Don Basile, CEO of Violin Memory. “The expanded talent, technology and intellectual property position Violin Memory at the forefront of the ongoing transformation of enterprise data centers to memory-based architectures.”

The acquisition of GridIron adds intellectual property for SAN-based caching and application acceleration to Violin's portfolio of Flash Memory Array solutions.  GridIron products are well suited for the markets Violin targets, such as virtualization, big data and business critical applications.  Both companies are privately-held, and business, engineering and operations units have been successfully integrated. GridIron co-founder Som Sikdar has over 20 patents and has helped found Finisar, Force 10 Networks.

“GridIron’s patented algorithms enable dramatic application acceleration in data center SAN environments by non-intrusively learning about input/output (I/O) access patterns and caching an application’s active dataset,” said Som Sikdar, founder and CTO of GridIron Systems. “By combining GridIron intellectual property and Violin Memory Array technologies, we can deliver solutions that will allow companies to transform the way they deploy and manage applications in their data center.”