Western Digital Acquires Flash Storage Specialist Virident

virident-flashMAXII

A Virident FlashMAXII PCIexpress card.

In a move to boost is offerings for enterprise SSD storage, Western Digital will acquire Virident Systems for $685 million, the companies said today. Western Digital is one of two remaining major players in the market hard disk drives (Seagate is the other), and seeking to position itself for the emergence of SSD (solid state drives).

Virident, a provider of server-side flash storage solutions, will be acquired by HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital. Virident provides PCIe-based enterprise flash storage solutions for virtualization, database, cloud computing, and webscale applications. Virident’s FlashMAX II can be installed in any server and provides high capacity in a single card.

Western Digital said the acquisition will extends HGST’s presence in the growing market for enterprise SSDs. The integration with HGST will enable Virident to build on channel relationships, and global customer reach.

“We have established a competitive position in the enterprise SSD space and with our recently announced acquisitions we are increasing our commitment to become an even more significant player in this high growth segment,” said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer of Western Digital. “Virident has a proven leadership team and a culture of innovation. Its combination of great people, leading products and advanced technology will enhance our increasingly strategic position in enterprise storage.”

“The Virident vision is centered on leading the flash platform transformation," said Virident CEO Mike Gustafson, who will join HGST as a senior vice president, reporting to HGST President Mike Cordano. "This includes advancing adoption of server-side flash storage, software and solutions in next-generation data centers. Bringing technology leadership and substantial business advantage to customers is our mission and drives our team every day,” . “I want to recognize and thank our employees and founders for the combination of vision and execution. We are excited to join HGST and accelerate the growth of our business, partnerships and value.”

Closing of the acquisition, which is subject to customary conditions, is expected to occur in the fourth calendar quarter of 2013.

For more on Virident's vision for the server-side flash market, see Storage Wars, Dispelling the Myth of Flash Economics, the recent Industry Perspectives column by Walter Hinton, the Senior Director of Field Marketing at Virident,