Solid state disk-storage provider Texas Memory Systems, which makes the RamSan storage product line, said Sept. 8 that it has acquired several data management software patents and accompanying source code from Incipient, a developer of scalable storage virtualization and management software.

Texas Memory Systems, based in Houston, manufactures SSD-based systems used by business, government, military and research organizations to accelerate enterprise applications running on Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and other high-end enterprise databases and servers.

TMS President Woody Hutsell told The Station that the additional intellectual property will allow his company to move into new sectors of the enterprise market.

"Our specialty is that we are already fast. The new IP from Incipient will enable us to add a new storage services layer -- including virtualization -- that's complementary to our performance-based product line," Hutsell said.

"This will put us in direct competition with other [mainline] storage companies, such as EMC, whose products are known for storage services, and not really for performance."

Hutsell said that the new storage features from Incipient -- including virtualization, management of multiple devices and a number of others -- will be included in RamSan releases in Q4 2009 and Q1 2010.

Incipient, founded in 2001 and based in Waltham, Mass., makes network-based storage virtualization software called iNSP that runs on Cisco Systems' MDS9000 Series SAN switches. iNSP can be deployed SAN-wide from a single management station.