Violin Systems, which pioneered the adoption of solid-state drives (SSDs) in servers as an alternative to storage area networks (SANs), this week signaled its attention to compete more broadly across the storage sector by acquiring X-IO Storage.
X-IO Storage has been operating as a division of X-IO Technologies that is focused on selling storage arrays based on Flash storage to the midmarket, while Violin Systems has continued to focus on high-performance applications.
The combination of the two companies will result sometime next year in a single software platform for managing off-the-shelf storage technologies that will span the entire software market, says Violin Systems CEO Mark Lewis. Violin Systems itself is recovering after filing for bankruptcy protection in 2017. The acquisition of X-IO Storage is part of a larger strategy to expand the total addressable market Violin Systems can now address, says Lewis.
“This acquisition accelerates our plans for Violin Systems by 12 to 18 months,” says Lewis.
The two companies between them will have over 1,600 customers that are primarily served by about 100 channel partners, says Lewis. All told, X-IO Storage has an installed base of over 8,000 arrays.
As part of the overall strategy, X-IO Storage will be rebranded as Axellio, Inc., a unit of Violin Systems that will focus on building a hyper-converged platform that essentially creates a “data center in a box” for the network edge. Axellio will be led by Bill Miller, the current CEO of X-IO Storage.
Given the level of fierce competition across the storage sector, it’s clear Violin Systems will have its work cut out for it. But Lewis says Violin Systems offerings will be found to be complementary to many existing storage offerings provided by much larger rivals. As such, he expects the number of channel partners willing to carry Violin Systems offerings as an extension of their storage portfolios to considerably increase in the months ahead.
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