DDN announced that it has entered into a
strategic partnership with
Western
Digital Corp. that includes an agreement to
acquire Western Digital's IntelliFlash business.
Additionally, the companies will expand their existing relationship
through a mutual global strategic sourcing agreement. DDN and Western
Digital are committed to executing a smooth transition for customers and key
stakeholders.
Building on its decades-long
foundation in the most demanding data environments, DDN
has greatly expanded its business over the past 12 months
by acquiring market leading enterprise and multicloud technologies.
This latest acquisition of IntelliFlash extends DDN's leadership as
a value-add provider of AI and multicloud data management
solutions. The strategic partnership also expands the relationship between DDN
and Western Digital, enabling increasingly compelling storage
solutions with new performance and cost innovations.
"We are delighted to add Western
Digital's high-performance enterprise hybrid, all flash and NVMe solutions to
DDN's industry leading data management at scale
product portfolio. We welcome members of the extremely talented WDC
IntelliFlash team to our rapidly expanding DDN family and look
forward to better serving our more than 10,000 customers and 500
partners worldwide with their data challenges across AI, analytics,
IoT, multicloud and virtualized environments," said Alex Bouzari, CEO and
co-founder of DDN. "With this acquisition, we are also strengthening our
strategic partnership with Western Digital, who will become both a customer of
IntelliFlash by DDN and a key HDD and SSD supplier to DDN."
"Today's
announcement represents a compelling step forward for IntelliFlash," said Mike
Cordano, Western Digital president and chief operating officer. "With DDN's
resources, technical expertise and focus on solving customers' end-to-end data
and information management challenges, we believe IntelliFlash will be well
equipped to enable new levels of efficiency for customers. We are committed to
ensuring a seamless transition for customers and other key
stakeholders, and looking forward to building a thriving strategic
partnership with DDN."
DDN and Western
Digital will be actively working to deliver a seamless
transition for customers and partners with a promise of ongoing
product availability and continuity of support. Existing IntelliFlash
customers will benefit from DDN's focus on storage and data management
challenges, deep expertise in service and support and its rich,
broad technology portfolio. DDN will further invest in an accelerated roadmap
of the IntelliFlash line and will be engaging closely with IntelliFlash
customers to hear about business challenges and opportunities where DDN can
innovate once the acquisition is complete.