Startup Virident Systems Seeks to Revolutionize Storage with Flash Memory

TMCnet Group Editorial Director Erik Linask (News - Alert) got to speak to startup solid state storage provider Virident (News - Alert) Systems, Inc. as part of TMC’s “On the Road” Series in San Jose. Virident, founded five years ago in Silicon Valley, is focused on creating enterprise-class solutions based on Storage Class Memory, a class of disruptive technologies that includes flash memory.

Kumar Ganapathy, CEO of Virident, believes moving flash memory into the storage space, including data centers and enterprise storage, will revolutionize the way information is stored. He says he envisions a storage future in which the same flash memory chips that go into billions of smartphones today will drive data centers to adopt a completely new storage architecture with massive cost reductions and a significantly smaller footprint.

Solid state devices essentially pack a large number of flash memory chips onto a small board, enabling them to be integrated into the enterprise world, where storage administrators can use them to drive high intensity applications. Solid state disks allow companies to condense what was once a very large storage array into a solution that fits into the palm of your hand.

“Enterprise data centers within the next five years will all migrate to solid state (storage),” said Ganapathy. He added that additional benefits of the solid state architecture include improved response times of overall infrastructure. The company’s tachIOn solid-state offering features a predictable performance of four to 10 times that of competitors over the life of the product, as well as enterprise-class reliability and serviceability. The company also offers the Greencloud Storage Software, which provides a framework for building out solid state disks across an entire data center.

“Our advantages are on the product side,” said Ganapathy, commenting that the company is trying to create a unique partnership model with OEMs to educate the enterprise on the unique value proposition of solid state.

Virident received $13 million in Series B funding last year, led by Sequoia Capital (News - Alert) and Globespan Capital Partners. The funds are being used to accelerate growth and scale of the company’s solutions.

“Solid-state storage is the fastest growing segment of the storage market,” said Mike Goguen, a partner at Sequoia Capital. “Virident is positioned as the leader in the PCIe-based Flash enterprise segment. Virident’s Flash expertise has created a disruptive and unique solution to the rapidly growing data-intensive enterprise-class application workloads such as rich media, web2.0, data analytics, and social media. Virident’s tachIOn is the first solution that delivers on the growing requirement for Tier-0 storage solutions: fast storage that occupies the space between servers and traditional hard-drive storage solutions on the server-side and/or the storage-side.”

“Virident not only has unique and disruptive technology, but they also have a world-class management team with a compelling vision for making Flash storage both viable and affordable for the enterprise-class customer,” said Ullas Naik, managing director, Globespan Capital Partners. “Since the introduction of tachIOn, Virident has garnered an impressive and growing list of enterprise customers. Their vision for enterprise solutions that deliver the highest sustained performance without compromising on enterprise reliability is evidenced by their recent announcements of 800GB storage capacity, twice that of competing products, in a low profile packaging.”

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