Fusion-io Acquires NexGen Storage

SALT LAKE CITY, April 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Fusion-io, Inc. (NYSE: FIO) today announced that it acquired Colorado-based NexGen Storage. NexGen is a leading developer of hybrid storage appliances based on Fusion ioMemory for small to medium enterprises (SMEs). By using software in combination with ioMemory and standard disk drives, NexGen transforms industry-leading x86 server platforms into hybrid storage systems that provide the performance of an all-flash array at a fraction of the cost.

This acquisition is a strategic expansion of the software-defined Fusion-io product portfolio, accelerating Fusion-io's opportunity in the SME market with a solution built to allow customers to provision both performance and capacity according to their needs. The sophisticated ioControl management software at the core of the NexGen hybrid storage system transparently shares all storage resources and maintains simultaneous performance targets for multiple applications. With the ioControl software, customers can provision, prioritize and maintain predictable performance efficiently and cost effectively. The ioControl software also ensures that customers have a clear upgrade path to all-flash solutions as their data demands continue to grow.

"Many SME businesses have lean IT teams and budgets, making it critical to offer an integrated and affordable entry point for flash powered application acceleration that delivers consistent performance, even under demanding workloads like VDI and analytics," said David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO and Chairman.  "The hybrid NexGen solution combines memory attached flash and disk on leading server platforms to provide a system tuned to deliver performance, price and capacity. With this acquisition, we will maintain the current NexGen product model as we transition to supporting customers' preferred server platforms with our OEM partners."

"We architected our solution around Fusion ioMemory because it offered the highest reliability, the most predicable performance, and because it is built as a platform for easy developer integration," said John Spiers, co-founder of NexGen and new Fusion-io Senior Vice President and General Manager, NexGen Products. "The NexGen ioControl software uniquely eliminates the need for another layer of latency in storage tiering and the bottlenecks introduced by SSD storage controllers, making it the ideal hybrid system to evolve into an open, software defined platform at Fusion-io." 

As data demands continue to expand for businesses of all sizes, the NexGen ioControl software enables IT teams to control and prioritize acceleration for mission critical, business critical, and even non-critical applications. Through the ioControl software, the NexGen system uniquely:

• Enables customers to independently provision performance and capacity with a software defined architecture that provides the performance of an all-flash array at the price of a hybrid system;
• Delivers dynamic real-time flash write caching, read caching and tiering with managed performance targets, providing sustained and predicable performance for multiple applications;
• Provides enterprise reliability with Fusion ioMemory, which is estimated to support over 250 times more data written over a system's lifetime compared to systems based on SATA and SAS SSDs;
• Consistently accelerates application performance at least three times more than systems that integrate SSDs behind legacy storage controllers; and
• Transparently moves data between high performance and low cost storage media, eliminating the need for another software layer to manage storage tiering

Small to medium enterprises have strong relationships with their value added resellers (VARs). To continue supporting SMEs through their preferred IT providers and expand availability of the NexGen hybrid storage system to customers worldwide, NexGen's network of VARs will be added to the global Fusion-io reseller channels.

Fusion-io today adds approximately 50 NexGen employees to its team. Fusion-io paid approximately $114 million in cash and approximately $5 million in stock for all of the outstanding stock, warrants and vested equity awards of NexGen, subject to the adjustments and escrow and other provisions set forth in the agreement among the parties. In addition, Fusion-io assumed all unvested NexGen employee equity awards. 

The NexGen hybrid storage system is currently available. For more information about the NexGen hybrid storage system, please visit www.fusionio.com/nexgen.

To learn more about Fusion-io, go to http://www.fusionio.com. Follow Fusion-io on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/fusionio and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/fusionio.

About Fusion-io

Fusion-io delivers the world's data faster. Our Fusion ioMemory platform and software defined storage solutions accelerate virtualization, databases, cloud computing, big data and performance applications. From e-commerce retailers to the world's social media leaders and Fortune Global 500 companies, our customers are improving the performance and efficiency of their data centers with Fusion-io technology to accelerate the critical applications of the information economy.

Note on Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, including, but are not limited to, statements concerning our beliefs concerning the market for and benefits and value of our products and solutions to our customers and end users, including the NexGen hybrid storage system, our business strategy and our acquisition of NexGen, including the expected benefits of the transaction. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions regarding future events and business performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained, anticipated, or implied in any forward-looking statement, including, but not limited to, risks associated with the potential that Fusion-io or its customers may not realize the benefits that Fusion-io currently expects from the NexGen acquisition, risks inherent in the integration and combination of complex products or technologies, risks associated with our acquisition strategy and disruptions in our business and operations as a result of acquisitions, and such other risks set forth in the registration statements and reports that Fusion-io files with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.fusionio.com. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee that the future results, levels of activity, performance or events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or will occur. Fusion-io undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason after the date of this press release.

SOURCE Fusion-io, Inc.