Storage manufacturer Fusion-io buys cache specialist

Data and storage specialist Fusion-io has acquired the start-up IO Turbine for $95 million. IO Turbine develops software for virtual environments, where an SSD cache is used to remove I/O bottlenecks.

IO Turbine’s Accelio software adds a cache layer to virtual environments using SSDs. This allows Accelio to avoid I/O bottlenecks in applications that require a lot of data traffic from storage networks. According to IO Turbine, Accelio is a transparently functioning system for VMware ESX environments with Windows 7 or Server 2008 as guest operating system.

Fusion-io pays $95 million for IO Turbine, of which $35 million in cash. The storage manufacturer expects to complete the acquisition by the end of August. Fusion-io hopes to gain a competitive edge by being able to offer software and hardware integrated. Fusion-io was founded in 2006 and went public in June of this year; IO Turbine was founded in 2009, but kept its existence – and that of its technology – secret until May of this year.