Fusion-io co-founder and chief executive David Flynn was one of the attendees at the NetApp Customer Day mini-event at VMworld 2012. The executive discussed his company, the partnership with NetApp and flash storage in an interview with Wikibon founder Dave Vellante (full video below).

The Cube alumnus said that it his company has seen sales shoot up by 82 percent in 2011, and a compound annual growth rate of 222 percent in the past four years. The collaboration with NetApp, which was announced around the same time, fit in nicely with Fusion-io’s continuous expansion of its ecosystem and product line-up – Vellante wanted to know what NetApp is getting out of it.

Flynn’s answer was an intricate one. The CEO explained that the so-called performance layer – which has abided  to Moore’s law flawlessly in the past few decades – generates more data than the capacity tier can handle. He went on to elaborate the details of the partnership.

From a technical point of view, NetApp’s filesystem handles the data that doesn’t get written into flash cache very well. The combination of these technologies translates into a very attractive product, offering by two leading vendors in their respective verticals.

Both Fusion-io and NetApp are so-called pure-play companies that specialize in selling hardware and rely on the channel for value-added services. Flynn considers flash as a catalyst in the maturing IT market, but one that drives companies to add additional layers of value rather than consolidating their business.

Flynn sees shift in demand towards more choice, and increasingly enterprises are finding this choice in the cloud rather than with a one-stop-shop vendor. Cloud service providers are competing for the very upper layer that customers aspire to achieve, and Fusion-io merely provides the technology that supports it.

Vellante and Flynn covered a lot of ground in the discussion. For the full scoop, including the Fusion-io take on traditional environments and an insider’s look  at their product line, check out the full interview below.