SanDisk completes spin-out of ioControl

The ioControl solutions business, which was acquired by SanDisk as part of the acquisition of Fusion-io in 2014, develops hybrid storage appliances that combine PCIe flash storage with traditional hard disk drives. The new entity will be known as NexGen Storage, Inc. (NexGen), taking on the name it originally held before the entity was acquired by Fusion-io. “Hybrid systems incorporating hard-disk drives are not part of SanDisk’s strategic focus,” said Sumit Sadana, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, SanDisk Corporation. “Spinning out the ioControl business allows us to focus our resources on our core business, while positioning the independent company to address the significant opportunities in the dynamic enterprise storage market.” SanDisk has agreed to be a supplier of PCIe flash storage technology to NexGen, but will not maintain an ownership interest. John Spiers, co-founder and chief executive officer of the original NexGen, will lead the new company. “NexGen was founded to address the performance and management challenges associated with solutions that use multiple types of storage like NVDIMM, flash, hard disk drives, cloud as a tier, and others yet to be commercialized,” said Spiers. “Operating as a stand-alone company enables NexGen to retain our technology vision and best serve our customers.”