Typically when SanDisk comes to mind, it usually means a memory card or USB storage. Most consumers aren’t aware than SanDisk offers a few solid state drives, one with 60 GB and the other with 120 GB. The business sector has an even wider variety, adding the P4 line featuring various ways to interface including SATA, micro SATA, mSATA, LIF and BGA, and the iSSD line of integrated drives that are used in tablets, smartbooks, ultra-thin PCs and more.
But SanDisk's position in the enterprise market may get a turbo-charged boost, as the company has announced an agreement with enterprise SSD developer Pliant Technology. According to the agreement, SanDisk will acquire the company by forking over approximately $327 million in cash and provide certain "equity-based incentives." The deal is expected to close by the end of SanDisk's second fiscal quarter.
SanDisk is obviously after Pliant's technology. The latter company sells ultra-high performance enterprise solid state drives based on the SAS protocol and MLC NAND Flash memory. It also has plans to release PCIe-based solutions for high-performance compute servers. The lower cost of MLC is a key enabler for the broad adoption of SSDs in the enterprise market, the company said in a statement.
"Flash memory is making significant inroads into the enterprise by dramatically increasing application performance and reducing power consumption," said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk president and chief executive officer. "We believe that the combination of Pliant's innovative technology and enterprise-level system expertise with SanDisk's high-quality, large-scale MLC memory production is a winning value proposition for customers."
"Our advanced flash technology roadmap and flash management capability will complement Pliant's strengths and allow us to lead the way in reliability and performance in the Enterprise SSD market," Mahrotra added.
