Woz goes enterprise storage; Becomes chief scientist at Fusion-io

Steve Wozniak, best known for creating Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976, has a new gig now: Chief scientist at Fusion-io, an enterprise storage company. Wozniak had been an advisor to the company.

According to a statement (Techmeme), Wozniak will be an advisor to Fusion-io's R&D team. Fusion-io makes solid-state drives that look like this:

Fusion-io described Wozniak's role as the following:

Wozniak will act as a key technical advisor to the Fusion-io research and development group. He will also work closely with the executive team of Fusion-io in formulating a company strategy that will accelerate the expansion of major global accounts. 

For his part Wozniak said he believed that Fusion-io's technology is "extremely useful" to multiple applications and "almost all of the world's servers."

In many respects, Wozniak could become a pitchman for solid state drives in data centers. Fusion-io has three products: ioDrive, a direct-attached solid state storage drive; ioSAN, a networked enterprise solid-state drive; and ioXtreme, a consumer drive.  

But the enterprise play is Fusion-io's big pitch. The company is pushing solid state technology as a way to lower costs and increase the speed of storage deployments.