Fusion-io wants to speed up SME market bids with NexGen buy

Fusion-io has announced that it is buying up NexGen, a developer of hybrid storage appliances for small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

Based on the Fusion ioMemory virtual storage layer, NexGen combines software with standard disk drives to churn out hybrid storage systems with the performance of an all-flash array for a lower cost.

To its credit, Fusion-io was relatively up front about its intentions with the acquisition of NexGen, asserting in the announcement that the goal is to break farther into the SME market.

Fusion-io CEO and chairman David Flynn also touched upon how NexGen's product portfolio will be integrated, which shouldn't be difficult considering that its core platform already rests upon the aforementioned storage layer.

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. 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.

Fusion-io paid approximately $114 million in cash and $5 million in stock for Colorado-based NexGen.

The flash memory company also reassured that it will be bringing over approximately 50 NexGen employees to the Fusion-io team.