Steve Wozniak’s startup Fusion-io has stirred quite a fuss in the IT world with its flash-based storage acceleration technology, and the same can be said of the stock market.  The company had a very successful IPO earlier this year, and it has just been selected as the stock of the year by Barron’s.  Fusion topped the list, which hosts nine other companies including Oracle, Apple and HP, alongside EA and others.

“The No. 1 pick for 2012 is data-storage company Fusion-io Inc , which Barron’s highlighted as a possible takeover target. The paper placed a $52 price target on Fusion-io over the next year, indicating the stock will more than double.”

Barron’s has a very optimistic forecast for Fusion-io, which managed to attract a sizable amount of early shareholder attention.  Fusion-io traded as low as $14.90 three days ago, and closed at $26.46 on Friday.  On Monday after the report was published, Fusion-io’s stock has seen a 22 point increase to a high of $32.39.

Barron’s expectations is good news for the company, but its earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2012 scheduled for November 2 is what analysts are looking forward to.  It will be the second report since the company went public in June.

Fusion-io has been seeing a tremendous amount of growth lately, thanks to high-profile customers such as Facebook, as well as shareholder interest.  Wikibon co-founder Dave Vellante provides a glimpse into Fusion’s market position and what sort of competition it may face in the near-term, as well as his long-term expectations for the company.

One reason Fusion-io managed to sustain its growth rate so far is that it’s constantly tweaking its offerings.  One of the latest updates is an Atomic Writes extension to its software, which trims the time it takes to complete a write by half.