The IntelliFlash all-flash storage has switched owners, with the acquisition of DataDirect Networks (DDN) to Western Digital Corporation.
News about DDN’s plans to acquire IntelliFlash has started late August, with its expansion lineup after Tintri, Nexenta, and the Lustre file systems. The company aims to be the leader of the data storage industry, highlighting high-performance computing environments that make it valuable for research institutes and academia, among other institutions.
The IntelliFlash technology brings DDN unified SAN and NAS. This will allow serving larger customer base.
Meanwhile, the acquisition of the IntelliFlash also concludes Western Digital Corp’s intention to exit the storage system business. The transaction is said to be completed by the end of 2019, while the financial terms were not revealed.
However, Western Digital Corp is still pursuing its business as a supplier of hard disk and flash drives. The storage systems from Flash is just one of the company’s initiative to boost its sales and margins. According to Tech Target, the revenue of Western Digital Corp last June was a huge 19 percent fall from its revenue back in June 2018.
Western Digital acquired SanDisk Corp. in 2015 and has purchased Tegile Systems two years after. The company rebranded the IntelliFlash but stopped selling the product. Because of this lack of productivity with sales, the company decided to sell it to DDN.
“DDN and Western Digital are committed to executing a smooth transition for customers and key stakeholders. This latest acquisition of IntelliFlash extends DDN’s leadership as a value-add provider of AI and multi-cloud data management solutions,” said DDN in a statement.
Accelerated Roadmap
After the IntelliFlash acquisition, DDN said it will push through an accelerated roadmap for the line, adding innovation to help customers in business challenges. “We are adding Western Digital’s high-performance enterprise hybrid, all-flash and NVMe solutions to DDN’s data management at scale product portfolio. And we welcome members of the extremely talented WDC IntelliFlash team to our rapidly expanding DDN Family,” said DDN Co-Founder Alex Bouzari.
Since 2017, DDN continues to expand its data storage capacity, acquiring big businesses in the industry. Its acquisition of Tintri in 2018 is one of the huge steps in creating support for heavily virtualized environments. This year, it added two new software–Nexenta and the IntelliFlash.
DDN also targets to increase its purchases of disk and SSDs from Western Digital with a multiyear sourcing contract.
