Fusion-io takes fresh server scalp with Cisco deal

Upstart PCIe-flash card maker Fusion-io has notched up another victory with the announcement of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) relationship with Cisco.

Cisco's UCS B-Series blade servers are set to get Fusion-io ioMemory 2 cards built into them, according to the announcement, which was made on Monday night.

The announcement means Fusion-io has significant OEM relationships with all the major server makers, as it already has relationships with Dell, IBM and HP. It supplies equipment to Oracle but has no specific relationship.

"With its strong track record of reliability and unique cut-through architecture, Fusion ioMemory will amplify the power of Cisco UCS Blade Servers to provide scalable application acceleration for Cisco customers," Paul Perez, chief technology officer of Cisco's Data Center Group, said in a statement.

The first servers with Fusion-io inside should ship in the second half of 2012, Fusion-io said.

The Salt Lake City, Utah-based company has many contemporaries but few competitors in the flash storage industry, with rivals taking another tack, by working on flash storage arrays, or finding it hard to close technology gaps with some of the company's advanced features, such as auto commit memory.

Other competition comes from the major enterprises themselves, though EMC's attempt to dethrone Fusion-io via VFCache (formerly known as Project Lightning), was received poorly by the industry.