Amazon.com Inc. has quietly acquired Israeli data center startup E8 Storage Inc., it was reported today. 

People close to the matter separately leaked the news to Reuters and Israeli business journal Globes. Sources in the industry who spoke to Globes estimated that the deal could be worth between $50 million and $60 million, but Reuters’ tipster later said the price tag was significantly lower.

E8 has raised more than $18 million from investors, including Accel, to develop high-speed storage arrays for enterprise data centers. The startup started out using flash memory in its systems but later added a new array equipped with Intel Corp.’s Optane drives. Optane drives are based on a type of memory called 3D XPoint that provides significantly faster performance than traditional flash.

E8’s application of the technology may have been what caught the attention of Amazon. Before it was pulled offline, the startup’s website claimed that its systems provide up to 10 times better performance at half the cost of competing flash appliances. Last year, the startup’s Optane-based array set a new industry performance record in the popular SFS 2014 benchmark test.

Amazon may be planning to use the technology to enhance the infrastructure capabilities of its Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud business. But since the value of the deal was reportedly not particularly high, there’s also a chance it was simply an acquihire meant to allow the retail giant to absorb E8’s technical talent. One way or another, the move will help make AWS more competitive amid the rapid gains of rival cloud providers.

E8 lists 30 employees on its LinkedIn page. The team will reportedly join Amazon’s engineering center in Tel Aviv.

Amazon makes extensive use of strategic acquisitions to strengthen its cloud business. In January, the company picked up a startup called TSO Logic Inc. that developed a service for optimizing the cost-efficiency  of cloud environments. Earlier that month, Amazon bought Israeli data protection provider CloudEndure Ltd. for a reported $200 million to $250 million.

Photo: Tony Webster/Flickr