Seagate Sinks 40 Mil into Virident In Order to Offer OEM and Distribution Partners PCIe Flash Solutions

It has been some time now since the rumor mill started where Seagate was in search of a flash storage solution partner, all rumors coming to fruition this afternoon with Seagates strategic partnership with flash storage vendor Viradent Systems Inc.

In exchange for a 40 million dollar investment (again very close to previous rumors of what they were willing to spend), and appointment of one member to the Virident Board of Directors, Seagate now has the ability to immediately offer a complete line of flash-based PCIe solutions to its OEM and distribution partners.

For future consideration, this makes things very interesting for the consumer market as well, Seagate only really having brought us the Momentus XT Hybrid which didn’t really cut it.  A partnership such as this definitely shows us that storage will see a handshake between hard drives and flash for some time to come.

“Seagate is thrilled to team with Virident, a technology leader in one of the fastest growing markets in enterprise and cloud computing,” said Gary Gentry, senior vice president and general manager, Solid State Drives at Seagate. “Together, we are working to develop the next-generation hardware and software solutions in the PCIe space. Our solid-state strategy is founded on both in-house development and through strategic partnerships with innovative companies to deliver the broadest portfolio in the industry. We believe that this strategic agreement immediately strengthens our leading position in the enterprise storage market by adding a broad line of Seagate flash-based PCIe solutions powered by Virident to our portfolio. We look forward to a long, productive partnership with Virident.”

“We are extremely pleased to have Seagate as a strategic partner and investor,” said Mike Gustafson, chief executive officer of Virident. “This partnership validates Virident’s vision of pervasive flash in the performance tier and accelerates our shared vision by bringing next-generation SCM solutions to the enterprise and web datacenters worldwide. The agreement also expands Virident’s routes to market today by making our best-in-class PCIe flash products available to Seagate’s world-class channels.”

Checkout the Seagate Release here!