March 30, 2009 -
Western Digital
has entered the SSD market by acquiring SiliconSystems
for $65 million in a cash transaction.
"WD's strong balance sheet, sales reach, and operations and logistics capabilities will allow us to greatly accelerate our penetration of our existing markets, while combining our engineering expertise with WD will enable us to develop new solid-state drives to broaden our overall product portfolio and address the emerging applications for solid-state storage in WD's existing customer base," said Michael Hajeck, a founder and CEO of SiliconSystems, now senior vp and general manager of WD's Solid-State Storage business unit.
Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems now becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit, complementing WD's existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise Storage business units. WD has published a FAQs page about this acquisition.
Editor's comments:- from the time when SiliconSystems first appeared on our SSD pages in 2004 it was clear that the company was talking in a different way to the rest of the market. Of the 4 main market segments which I identified for SSD market penetration (published 2005) - I mentioned SiliconSystems as the pioneer in "High Reliability DAS". Quoting from that article - "The customer value proposition of the High Reliability DAS SSD is that the interval between server failures will be extended by several years compared to HDD technology."
In recent years the company has avoided being sucked along the alternative currents of the small form factor SSD market and stuck to its mission of designing SSDs which are sustainable for customers to own - as reliable replacements for hard drives. The company's acquisition by WD demonstrates that those principles are valued where it counts - in the eyes of the world's fastest growing hard disk maker.
"WD's strong balance sheet, sales reach, and operations and logistics capabilities will allow us to greatly accelerate our penetration of our existing markets, while combining our engineering expertise with WD will enable us to develop new solid-state drives to broaden our overall product portfolio and address the emerging applications for solid-state storage in WD's existing customer base," said Michael Hajeck, a founder and CEO of SiliconSystems, now senior vp and general manager of WD's Solid-State Storage business unit.
Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems now becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit, complementing WD's existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise Storage business units. WD has published a FAQs page about this acquisition.
Editor's comments:- from the time when SiliconSystems first appeared on our SSD pages in 2004 it was clear that the company was talking in a different way to the rest of the market. Of the 4 main market segments which I identified for SSD market penetration (published 2005) - I mentioned SiliconSystems as the pioneer in "High Reliability DAS". Quoting from that article - "The customer value proposition of the High Reliability DAS SSD is that the interval between server failures will be extended by several years compared to HDD technology."
In recent years the company has avoided being sucked along the alternative currents of the small form factor SSD market and stuck to its mission of designing SSDs which are sustainable for customers to own - as reliable replacements for hard drives. The company's acquisition by WD demonstrates that those principles are valued where it counts - in the eyes of the world's fastest growing hard disk maker.