Violin Memory Acquires GridIron Systems

There are numerous news reports that Violin Memory has acquired GridIron Systems in a deal that should soon be officially announced by the companies.

Violin provides Flash memory storage systems to improve hard drives in data center servers. GridIron provides applications to speed up enterprise applications running on servers.

Terms of the deal were so far not made public. But Philippe Nicolas, head of product strategy at Scality, recently said the company was acquired for somewhere between $200 million and $300 million, according to a report from All Things D.

The deal closed at the end of December, Forbes added.

“By combining GridIron intellectual property and Violin Memory Array technologies, we can deliver solutions that will allow companies to transform the way they deploy and manage applications in their data center,” Violin CEO Don Basile said in a statement quoted by Forbes.

“The acquisition of GridIron Systems complements and expands Violin Memory’s strategy of offering memory-based solutions that accelerate business critical applications while optimizing IT infrastructures,” Basile was additionally quoted by VentureBeat.

GridIron applications are used for “online transaction processing, data warehouses, virtualization, and ‘big data’ analytics,” VentureBeat reported. “As such, the companies complement one another.”

Violin has about 450 employees and added about 20 GridIron employees as part of the deal.

Also, Violin has raised $186 million from Toshiba, SAP Venture, Juniper Networks, General Electric, Highland Capital and other investors. GridIron had raised over $30 million from investors.

There is speculation that Violin Memory may hold an initial public offering during 2013. In 2012, the company was valued at more than $800 million. In an earlier deal, Violin acquired assets of Gear6 in 2010.

The company continues to expand. Last April, Violin Memory announced eight new channel partners across seven new countries in Europe, MSPToday reported. They include: Viadex, Mobius Business Technologies, and Softcat in the United Kingdom, IT Nations in Denmark, Tara Sistem in Turkey, EnjoyIT in Sweden, IP Service and Green Data Systems (GDS) in The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.