EMC to acquire flash storage firm

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Hopkinton-based EMC Corp. said Monday it plans to acquire DSSD, a 60-employee flash storage architecture company based in California’s Silicon Valley.

EMC said the acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of June, with DSSD continuing operations as a stand-alone unit. Financial terms are not being disclosed, EMC said.

DSSD is preparing to launch rack-scale flash products in 2015 that will provide high-speed storage capabilities for functions such as facial recognition, climate analysis, risk management and fraud detection analytics. EMC said it led the first round of investment into DSSD in 2013 and has remained an active development partner.

DSSD has one of the most accomplished systems and storage engineering teams in the Silicon Valley, according to EMC.

“Working together with EMC, DSSD will deliver a new type of storage system with game-changing latency, IOPS (input/output operations per second) and bandwidth characteristics while offering the operational efficiency of shared storage,” Andy Bechtolsheim, DSSD chairman, said in a statement.

All DSSD employees will join EMC when the deal closes, the company said, with current DSSD President and CEO Dill Moore leading the unit. Bechtolshiem will serve as a strategic advisor, the company said.

In 2008, EMC became the first company to integrate flash – a fast but expensive form of solid-state memory – into its hard drive-powered systems, which tend to be slower. Sales of flash capacity devices have increased 70 percent over the past year, the company said.

EMC was a latecomer to the all-flash market though, only entering the arena through the May 2012 acquisition of Israeli-based XtremIO, which didn’t introduce its first product until September 2013. But in just a few months, the XtremIO captured a larger market share that all other all-flash competitors.

EMC invests at least 10 percent of its revenue into mergers and acquisition to make sure it stays ahead of the curve, Daniel Cobb, a distinguished engineer and flash evangelist at the company, said in April.

EMC said DSSD’s rack-scale products will complement existing flash offerings and support next-generation technology.