SanDisk acquires SMART Storage Systems for $307 million

SanDisk said Tuesday it will acquire SMART Storage Systems, a privately held solid state enterprise storage player, for $307 million as the company beefs up its efforts to grab data center market share.

SMART focuses on enterprise solid state drives and is owned by Silver Lake Partners. SMART's product portfolio is geared to the enterprise, cloud deployments and defense and industrial industries.

The transaction, which is expected to close in August, has been approved by all stakeholders.

For SanDisk, the SMART purchase is another step toward building out its enterprise portfolio. SanDisk traditionally has been tethered to the consumer market, which faces stiff price competition and can be a bit flaky on the demand side. SanDisk will take SMART and combine it with its SAS products and be qualified with most of the top storage OEMs.

SMART's flagship technology is called Guardian Technology, which aims to make NAND flash memory more durable and reliable. SMART had about $25 million in sales for its latest quarter. SanDisk said the acquisition will hurt earnings slightly in the second half of 2013 and then pad results in 2014.