Solid acquisition
Hard disk drive (HDD) giant Western Digital has acquired solid state drive (SSD) outfit SiliconSystems for $65 million in cash.
The acquisition gives WD an instant presence in the SSD market as well as improving its position in the embedded systems market, where the superior performance and reliability of SSDs are making them increasingly popular.
John Coyne, president and CEO of WD, said: "SiliconSystems' intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate WD's solid-state drive development programs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, providing greater choice for our customers to satisfy all their storage requirements."
The founder of SiliconSystems, Michael Hajeck, now becomes senior VP and GM of WD's new solid-state storage business unit. "...combining our engineering expertise with WD will enable us to develop new solid-state drives to broaden our overall product portfolio and address the emerging applications for solid-state storage in WD's existing customer base," he said.
With SSDs becoming increasingly more affordable, the presence of an additional competitor in this market is likely to be good news for consumers. There was no indication of when we can expect to see the first WD SSD, however.
