Word broke this week that EMC Corp. has quietly bolstered its efforts to move beyond traditional disk arrays with the acquisition of a stealthy startup called Graphite Systems Inc. that is developing a high-performance entrant into the flash storage race. The transaction is the latest indicator of the growing urgency surrounding the diversification initiative.

Stagnating revenues have sent EMC scurrying to catch up with the accelerating spending shift from mechanical to solid-state memory in pursuit of the high double- and triple-digit growth that some of its smaller flash-focused rivals are experiencing. It’s developing multiple different products as part of that push, the most anticipated of which is DSSD.

The forthcoming flash array not coincidentally has the most similarities to the technology that EMC is gaining through the purchase of Graphite Systems. Besides the fact that both have come to its possession via acquisitions rather than organic development efforts, they also share a focus on maximizing performance and employ the NVMe protocol to that end.

The communications standard facilitates ultra-fast exchange of data among flash arrays and the servers that process that information, which DSSD exploits to present bits as if they were physically present on the host in order to simplify access. The result is a faster and potentially more scalable architecture than the more conventional solutions that have been chipping away at EMC’s bottom line for the last few years.

Adding Graphite Systems to the mix accomplishes several key objectives. First, the storage giant gains valuable new technology with which to enhance DSSD, and, perhaps even more importantly, the people who developed that technology. Secondly, the acquisition takes a potential competitor out of the picture, which is usually a secondary point it comes to deals of such magnitude but likely isn’t in this particular case precisely because of the team’s caliber.

Graphite was founded in three years ago by former Quantum Corp. chief technology officer Mark Himmelstein and other storage industry veterans who have managed to raise $10 million in funding soon after launching on top of an earlier $1.5 million seed investment. That is a strong testament to the startup’s competitive potential, as well as a handy yardstick for estimating the value of the transaction, the terms of which were not disclosed.

Image via Geralt