Fusion-io Acquires NexGen Storage for $119 Million

Fusion-io, Inc. acquired Colorado-based NexGen Storage, Inc.

NexGen is a developer of hybrid storage appliances based on Fusion ioMemory for SMEs. By using software in combination with ioMemory and standard disk drives, NexGen transforms industry-leading x86 server platforms into hybrid storage systems that provide the performance of an all-flash array at a fraction of the cost.

This acquisition is a strategic expansion of the software-defined Fusion-io product portfolio, accelerating Fusion-io’s opportunity in the SME market with a solution built to allow customers to provision both performance and capacity according to their needs. The ioControl management software at the core of the NexGen hybrid storage system transparently shares all storage resources and maintains simultaneous performance targets for multiple applications. With the software, customers can provision, prioritize and maintain predictable performance efficiently and cost effectively. It also ensures that customers have an upgrade path to all-flash solutions as their data demands continue to grow.

"Many SME businesses have lean IT teams and budgets, making it critical to offer an integrated and affordable entry point for flash powered application acceleration that delivers consistent performance, even under demanding workloads like VDI and analytics," said David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO and chairman. "The hybrid NexGen solution combines memory attached flash and disk on leading server platforms to provide a system tuned to deliver performance, price and capacity. With this acquisition, we will maintain the current NexGen product model as we transition to supporting customers’ preferred server platforms with our OEM partners."

"We architected our solution around Fusion ioMemory because it offered the highest reliability, the most predicable performance, and because it is built as a platform for easy developer integration," said John Spiers, co-founder of NexGen and new Fusion-io SVP and GM, NexGen products. "The NexGen ioControl software uniquely eliminates the need for another layer of latency in storage tiering and the bottlenecks introduced by SSD storage controllers, making it the ideal hybrid system to evolve into an open, software defined platform at Fusion-io."

As data demands continue to expand for businesses of all sizes, the ioControl software enables IT teams to control and prioritize acceleration for mission critical, business critical, and even non-critical applications.

Through the software, the NexGen system:

• Enables customers to independently provision performance and capacity with a software defined architecture that provides the performance of an all-flash array at the price of a hybrid system;
• Delivers dynamic real-time flash write caching, read caching and tiering with managed performance targets, providing sustained and predicable performance for multiple applications;
• Provides enterprise reliability with Fusion ioMemory, which is estimated to support over 250 times more data written over a system’s lifetime compared to systems based on SATA and SAS SSDs;
• Accelerates application performance at least three times more than systems that integrate SSDs behind legacy storage controllers; and
• Transparently moves data between high performance and low cost storage media, eliminating the need for another software layer to manage storage tiering

SMBs have strong relationships with their VARs. To continue supporting SMEs through their preferred IT providers and expand availability of the NexGen hybrid storage system to customers worldwide, NexGen’s network of VARs will be added to the global Fusion-io reseller channels.

Fusion-io adds approximately 50 NexGen employees to its team.

Fusion-io paid approximately $114 million in cash and approximately $5 million in stock for all of the outstanding stock, warrants and vested equity awards of NexGen, subject to the adjustments and escrow and other provisions set forth in the agreement among the parties. In addition, Fusion-io assumed all unvested NexGen employee equity awards.

The NexGen hybrid storage system is available.