SanDisk buys Pliant for pro-grade solid-state drives
updated 10:40 am EDT, Mon May 16, 2011
Gives Sandisk access to $4.2 billion market
SanDisk has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Pliant Technology for $327 million in cash plus incentives. Sandisk's focus primarily has been on the consumer market, either directly or through OEMs. Pliant makes high performance SSD drives with SAS (SCSI) interfaces. Acquiring Pliant puts the company in a better position to go after the enterprise SSD storage market.
“Flash memory is making significant inroads into the enterprise,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk president and chief executive officer. “We believe that the combination of Pliant’s innovative technology and enterprise-level system expertise with SanDisk’s large-scale MLC memory production is a winning value proposition for customers.”
Pliant currently offers both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SSD drives under the "Lightning LB" label. The 2.5-inch comes with capacities ranging from 150GB to 400GB, while the 3.5-inch is available in either a 150GB or 300GB version. Pliant is also working on PCIe-based solutions.
