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Violin Memory

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VIOLIN systems
Company typePrivate
Founded2005; 19 years ago (2005)[1]
Headquarters
San Jose, California
,
U.S.
Key people
CEO: Mark Lewis, COO: Todd Oseth, CMO: Gary Lyng, SVP Worldwide Field Operations
OwnerQuantum Group of Funds
Websiteviolinsystems.com

Violin Systems is a private American company based in Silicon Valley, California, that designs and manufactures computer data storage products.

Corporate history

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The company was founded in 2005 as Violin Technologies by Donpaul Stephens and Jon Bennett in Iselin, New Jersey.[citation needed] Series A financing valued over $10 million was raised in 2010. Two more rounds of financing in 2011 raised an additional $75 million. Corporate investors included Juniper Networks and Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC). It was based in Mountain View, California around this time.

Series D financing of $80 million in March 2012 was led by SAP Ventures (arm of SAP AG), and included Highland Capital, GSV and others. The reported valuation was over $800 million.[2][3]

Violin Memory's initial public offering in September 2013, raised $162 million at a price of $9 a share.[4] Its stock price dropped to $2 a share after its largest partner, Hewlett Packard, became a competitor and due to concerns of how quickly it was spending money.[4] The company experienced losses of $34 million the following year and the board called for the resignation of the CEO.[5] Additionally, five shareholder lawsuits were filed against the company, alleging it did not disclose the financial impact expected from a federal shutdown.[4] In December 2013, the company terminated CEO Basile,[6] replacing him with Kevin DeNuccio in February 2014.[7]

The New York Stock Exchange de-listed Violin Memory shares in October 2016 because its market capitalization had fallen below $15 million.[8] A few days later, it changed to be traded on the OTC Markets Group exchange OTCQX, using the same VMEM symbol.[9] In November 2016, it was valued at $3.7 million.[7] On December 14, 2016, Violin Memory filed for Chapter 11 Federal Bankruptcy protection.[10]

On April 24, 2017, Violin announced in a press release that they had emerged from bankruptcy, and had been purchased by Quantum Partners LP, a private investment fund managed by Soros Fund Management LLC.[11]

As of October 16, 2018, Violin Systems released the statement that it had agreed to acquire the storage business of X-IO Technologies and in conjunction with the transaction X-IO has renamed itself as Axellio as its new company name.[12]

Technology

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Violin does not use solid-state drives (SSD), but instead uses a proprietary design referred to as flash fabric architecture (FFA).[13] The FFA technology consists of: a mesh of NAND flash dies, modules[14] that organize the mesh of flash dies, and a proprietary switched architecture for fault tolerance.[15] In September 2011, Violin announced the 6000 series all-silicon shared flash memory storage arrays.[16]

vMOS[17][18] is Violin Memory's software layer that integrates with the FFA to provide data protection, management and connectivity to the host.

Products

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Violin extreme performance storage platform, XVS 8 released October 4, 2018.

The Violin 7000 series includes application aware snapshots, continuous data protection, synchronous replication, asynchronous replication and metro cluster functionality.[19][20][21]

On December 1, 2015, the Violin Memory FSP 7250 and 7600 were announced. The Violin FSP 7250 was marketed as an entry level point product.[22]

The 7700[23] series can scale up to ten 6000 or 7000 series arrays for up to 700TB of raw capacity or 3.5 PB with deduplication[24]

The Violin 6000 series[25] all flash arrays include the 6600, 6200 and 6100. The 6600[26] is based on SLC flash and offers 17.5TB of capacity. The 6200[27] offers flash performance at capacities from 17.5 to 70TB. The 6100[28] is a smaller array at lower price of entry with a pay as you grow[29] option.

References

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  1. ^ "Violin Systems: Company". Violin Systems. Retrieved 2011-07-28.
  2. ^ "Violin Memory raises $50M, brings valuation to $800M". Silicon Valley Business Journal. March 30, 2012. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
  3. ^ "Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities". Edgar. US Securities and Exchange Commission. March 29, 2012. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
  4. ^ a b c Bort, Julie (December 11, 2013). "Newly Public Company Violin Memory Is In Turmoil And The Lawsuits Are Flying". Retrieved February 10, 2015.
  5. ^ "Can a new CEO pull Violin Memory out of its current slump?". The Register. January 7, 2014. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
  6. ^ "Struggling Flash Storage Firm Violin Memory Fires Its CEO". VentureBeat. December 16, 2013. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  7. ^ a b Mellor, Chris (November 10, 2016). "Violin Memory resembles toast". The Register. Retrieved November 22, 2016.
  8. ^ James Garrett Baldwin (October 28, 2016). "NYSE Moves to Delist Violin Memory (VMEM)". Investopedia. Retrieved October 31, 2016.
  9. ^ Chris Mellor (October 31, 2016). "Violin switches stock exchanges fast: OTCQX replaces delisting NYSE as its share trading body". The Register. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  10. ^ "Violin Memory's sad song leads to bankruptcy - Storage Soup". searchstorage.techtarget.com. Retrieved 2018-02-15.
  11. ^ Chris Mellor (April 25, 2017). "Violin Memory steps out of bankruptcy, takes the storage stage again". The Register. Retrieved April 27, 2017.
  12. ^ Joseph F. Kovar (October 16, 2018). "Violin Systems To Acquire X-IO Storage Business". CRN. Retrieved December 18, 2018.
  13. ^ Michael Cusanelli (June 27, 2014). "Violin Memory Delivers 'Business in a Flash' with Concerto 7000". The VAR Guy blog. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  14. ^ Antony Adshead (October 12, 2012). "Violin - a proudly proprietary storage vendor . . ". ComputerWeekly.com.
  15. ^ Chin-Fah, Heoh (March 8, 2012). "we raid vRAID". Storage GaGa Blog.
  16. ^ Robin Harris (April 11, 2012). "Violin's clean-sheet architecture". Storage Mojo blog. Retrieved September 17, 2013.
  17. ^ Brian Beeler (August 13, 2012). "Violin Pairs with Symantec to Deliver Data Management Tools". StorageReview.com.
  18. ^ Chris Mellor (August 14, 2012). "Symantec, Violin in no-strings fling for flash array software". The Register.
  19. ^ "VIOLIN CONCERTO 7000 ALL FLASH ARRAY; PERFORMANCE PACKED WITH DATA SERVICES" (PDF). Product Profile. Taneja Group. June 2014.
  20. ^ Nick Heath (June 24, 2014). "Violin Memory gives its flash storage an enterprise-friendly makeover". ZDNet. Archived from the original on February 11, 2015.
  21. ^ Steve Wexler (June 25, 2014). "Violin: In the data center, no one can hear you scream!". IT Trends & Analysis.
  22. ^ Sheryl Anderson (December 1, 2015). "Expanded Flash Storage Platform From Violin Provides Needed Solutions for Customers Seeking Optimization for Extreme Performance; Primary Storage Solutions; and Entry Level Capacity". Press release.
  23. ^ Peter Williams (June 26, 2014). "Violin: Violin Memory back in all-flash storage tune with new data management strings". Bloor.
  24. ^ Pedro Hernandez (June 24, 2014). "Violin Plays a Flashy Concerto with New 7000 Array". InfoStor.
  25. ^ "Three New All Flash Arrays 6100 (17.5TB, 26TB and 35TB) Revealed by Violin Memory". StorageNewsletter.com (Press Release). StorageNewsletter.com. August 12, 2014.
  26. ^ Timothy Prickett Morgan (October 18, 2013). "Violin Turns Flash Arrays Into Blazing Clusters". EnterpriseTech.
  27. ^ Carol Sliwa (May 2014). "Violin 6000 arrays feature proprietary flash modules, memory fabric". SearchSolidStateStorage.com.
  28. ^ Chris Mellor (August 4, 2014). "Violin strings up cheaper instrument: 17.5TB flash box for $100k + change". The Register.
  29. ^ Carol Sliwa (July 15, 2014). "Violin storage adds WFA models, pay-as-you-grow option". SearchSolidStateStorage.com.
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