Wikibon co-founder and CTO David Floyer discussed Seagate’s $40 million investment in Virident and the alliance that has emerged from the move on this morning’s NewsDesk program with Kristin Feledy (full video below).

Floyer says that this update comes as a very big surprise to him, considering the background of the two companies: Seagate is a major provider of traditional storage whose CEO publicly declared that SSDs are not a viable alternative to disk, while Virident is an up-and-coming PCIe flash startup.

Citing changing market conditions, Floyer deems the partnership a necessary step forward for Seagate. Sales of the 15,000 RPM drivers that have historically accounted for a sizable portion of the firm’s revenue have declined on the back of increased demand for speedier flash technology, and today it is a position where it has to adapt. The company tried addressing this trend early on with a hybrid solution, but it failed to attract the market’s attention.  Now Seagate is taking a different approach with a move that the Wikibon analyst whole-heartedly supports.

Floyer explains that the PCIe cards Virident sells are far superior alternatives to hybrid solutions, because they trade backward compatibility for improved performance.  Instead of sitting on top of the disk, the controller and SSDs reside on a separate piece of silicon that plugs directly into the motherboard, allowing for much faster access to memory.   More and more enterprises are acknowledging this as a better way of handling active data that is frequently accessed by users.

Seagate has a lot to gain from the partnership, and so does Virident. Floyer says that the relationship will provide the startup with a convenient solution to one of the biggest challenges faced by all emerging technology vendors: establishing a distribution channel.

Floyer predicts that, at first, the two companies will only develop solutions that leverage flash to speed up disk storage.  He stresses that a transition to full-fledged PCIe will have to be made eventually if Seagate wishes to remain competitive.  For Floyer’s full analysis, see the video below.