IBM to Acquire Texas Memory Systems by Year-End
August 22, 2012 - IDC Link
By: Donna Taylor
IBM to Acquire Texas Memory Systems by Yearend
As part of its Smarter Computing approach, IBM announced that it will acquire Texas Memory Systems
by yearend. TMS, based in Houston, Texas, designs and sells high-performance solid state storage
solutions.
With this acquisition, IBM gains a well-established and proven flash vendor and can now claim the IP as
its own. TMS has consistently targeted, and been successful with, many of the same industry verticals
and applications as IBM, including financial, government, and HPC, as SSDs lend themselves well to these
compute-intensive environments. The acquisition also allows IBM to leverage its R&D pedigree and
develop the technology with its own product portfolio in mind. When coupled with its continuing
partnerships with other flash memory companies, IBM becomes an increasingly bigger threat to its
competitors in this space.
Major vendors have increasingly placed SSD support capabilities in their product portfolios, making major
announcements this year at vendor events for their customers, partners, and industry analysts. Flash
technology offers substantial benefits, especially in the area of improved IOPS performance. And, despite
the price, a little SSD goes a long way, offering customers improved efficiencies and cost savings via
smaller footprints and improved power and cooling metrics.
While SSD technology/flash memory has been around for a number of years, it is only now coming into
its own as new and different use cases are explored for their deployment, not the least of which is workloadspecific environments. The need for improved performance has been a key driver in its adoption. However,
more recently newer technologies and delivery mechanisms have spurred increased interest; each, in fact,
driving the other, including Big Data and cloud deployments. SSDs will gain greater traction in the industry
as long as the need for improved compute speeds continues to accelerate. Big Data and the cloud will
see to that, even if no other use cases were considered. IDC projects that the uptake in flash technology
will continue, accelerate even, in the near future as a result.
So, what does this mean for IBM and TMS' competitors? No doubt, this will speed up acquisition decisions
among IBM's competitors in their attempt to stake their claim in the flash market. There are other successful
flash vendors and even more start-ups with their own flavor of flash. In the meantime, IBM's partnerships
with other SSD suppliers will likely continue as no one type of flash memory is suitable in all IT
environments. TMS' high-performance flash offerings are standalone products, whereas its competitors'
product offerings are incorporated into other products to enhance their operation.
Expect to see the technology gained from the acquisition of TMS to increasingly take a starring role in
IBM's storage, server, software, and PureSystems offerings in the near future as IBM looks to capitalize
on the IP and the lead time, which will likely be a lot shorter if one of IBM's competitors looks to snap up
other flash technology competitors and start-ups.
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