The solid-state array business is starting to make some news here at the outset of Q2 2010.
Toshiba, the company that invented flash memory and is second only to Korea’s Samsung in delivering flash to the market, announced that it is joining a group of companies in investing a cool $20 million in startup Violin Memory Systems, which makes enterprise storage appliances with RAID protection.
Naturally, Toshiba will become the main supplier to Violin.
Violin’s new-generation storage appliances are pretty versatile, in that they can be used to store business-critical structured or unstructured data that can co-exist in the same box (handling speed-critical workloads) with standard spinning-disk arrays.
Elsewhere in the enterprise SSD world, look for another brilliant startup, Schooner, to make some news soon. Sorry to be a tease, but The Station is sworn to secrecy on this one — we will have it as soon as we can.
Finally, Fusion-io — yet another hot enterprise SSD storage startup when made a pact with IBM last December to OEM its wares — also appears to be making headway in its early growth period. If you were wondering where Steve Wozniak is these days, well, that’s where he’s currently stationed as chief scientist.
Stay tuned.