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Western Digital put some pressure on solid state-storage market competitors Samsung and Seagate Aug. 29 by adding to its growing mountain of intellectual storage property.
The San Jose, Calif.-based data center equipment maker added to its stockpile by announcing that it will acquire new-gen flash storage maker Tegile Systems of neighboring Newark, Calif.
Tegile has been a rising player in the flash storage market since its launch in 2012; it brings a non-trivial 1,700 new customers to WD’s Data Center Systems business.
Financial details on the transaction were not released by WD. The company said it expects the acquisition to close the week of Sept. 4.
Plenty of Storage IP Already in Hand
WD already owns Hitachi Data Systems and SanDisk, two older, more conventional data storage companies established long before the cloud era. Now, with Tegile, it will own new-generation, persistent-memory storage designed and built in the last five years specifically for cloud-optimized data centers.
There are still some companies out there that might be willing acquisition targets, but market leader Samsung, Seagate, Intel, Toshiba, Micron and SK Hynix probably wouldn’t want to be a party to such a deal at this time. But one never knows about mergers and acquisitions.
With Tegile’s IntelliFlash products focused on fast data transfer and WD’s ActiveScale products aimed at big data workloads, DCS believes it will be in a position to address in more complete fashion the diverse set of needs that enterprises have to harness more value from their data.
“The addition of Tegile’s technology and talented team will advance our goal of solving customers’ most significant challenges in capturing, preserving, transforming and accessing data,” WD President and Chief Operating Officer Mike Cordano said.
Western Digital has been a key partner and long-term investor in Tegile and has already enhanced various aspects of Tegile’s business, Tegile CEO Rohit Kshetrapal said.
Kshetrapal answered the following questions from eWEEK about the deal:
Q: What will be your role after the merger?
A: Tegile will join and complement Western Digital’s core team in its Data Center Systems (DCS) business unit, which focuses on the company’s disk, flash and hybrid storage platforms, as well as object storage systems for use in cloud-scale data centers. I will be part of the DCS leadership team as it continues to grow and build out Western Digital’s line of enterprise storage solutions and assist in sales and marketing.
Q: Besides joining WD’s large worldwide sales, marketing and channel network, what are a couple of other most important aspects of having WD as an owner?
A: Since launching in 2012, Tegile’s relationship with Western Digital has been strong and collaborative. We have been using their components for many years, and through this partnership we realized that the value of a systems integration would be unprecedented in the market place. This vertical integration in the marketplace will allow us to invest in our product and ensure we continue to deliver the best flash storage solution on the market.
Q: Any other perspective on this deal that you think eWEEK readers should know (they are generally experienced IT professionals who regularly make IT buying decisions)?
A: With Tegile’s IntelliFlash products focused on fast data and DCS’ ActiveScale products focused on big data, DCS will be in a unique position to fully address the diverse set of needs that organizations have to harness the value of their data throughout its lifecycle.