Virident’s post-merger strategy : Flash storage + software | #oow13
Ken Grohe, Virident’s vice president of worldwide customer operations, returned to theCUBE at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 to discuss the latest developments from his company and the use cases that are driving flash adoption in the enterprise.
In September, hard drive maker Western Digital announced that Virident was merging with its HGST subsidiary in a $685 million deal, representing one of the largest exits in the history of the solid-state storage market. The acquisition provided the firm with more resources to compete in the PCIe SSD space, Grohe tells theCUBE hosts Dave Vellante and David Floyer, including additional engineering muscle and a broader channel reach.
Asked about the changes made to Virident’s product strategy in the last 12 months, he says that management is doubling down on software in an effort to diversify beyond hardware and meet long term business goals. The vendor’s ability to combine the two is what sets it apart from the competition, according Grohe, a claim that Floyer wholeheartedly agrees with.
The database backup capabilities built into Virident’s cards “really impressed me,” Floyer says, noting that the functionality addresses a challenge faced by the overwhelming majority of enterprises. The same software enables admins to create a storage-area network that provides disaster recovery while making data more accessible to end-users..
“To do that you actually need the two controllers talking to each other, you have to have it right down at the kernel level within the controller within each of those spaces,” Floyer explains. “[In] most of the other systems in this area, the point of control is in the server itself, it’s at the time of commitment, here they talk to each other so there is dual commitment happening all at the same time.”
After going over Virident’s new partner program and the complementary certification track, Grohe highlights that the speed and low-latency of flash storage is disrupting application development. Apps can be architected to ingest and serve information in near real time.
Watch the clip below for the full interview.
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