SanDisk Acquires Schooner Information Technology, Picks Up Enterprise SSD Knowledge

Ever heard of Schooner Information Technology? Now you have. That company was just acquired by SanDisk, a company you're surely familiar with. Schooner is a Silicon Valley-based company that develops flash-optimized database and data store solutions. The release states that "Schooner's products complement SanDisk's growing portfolio of enterprise solid state disk (SSD) and flash-optimized software offerings that enable customers to accelerate the performance of data-intensive applications and reduce overall cost of ownership." What's the mean in English? Well, SanDisk will be picking up a team of database and flash optimization experts, and it's products will be finely tuned to mesh well with SanDisk's enterprise SSD portfolio.

Designed to fill the gap between stock do-it-yourself open source solutions and expensive high-end database deployments, Schooner's products deliver "enterprise-grade performance, powering data center consolidation at a lower cost." Hopefully we'll see what that really means in the market here in the not-too-distant future.

SANDISK ACQUIRES ENTERPRISE STORAGE SOFTWARE MAKER SCHOONER INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

MILPITAS, Calif., June 26, 2012 - SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a global leader in flash memory storage solutions, today announced the acquisition of Schooner Information Technology, Inc., an enterprise software company located in Silicon Valley that develops flash-optimized database and data store solutions. Schooner's products complement SanDisk's growing portfolio of enterprise solid state disk (SSD) and flash-optimized software offerings that enable customers to accelerate the performance of data-intensive applications and reduce overall cost of ownership. Schooner's team of database and flash optimization experts have joined SanDisk's Enterprise Storage Solutions (ESS) team. Schooner's products will be optimized for SanDisk's enterprise SSD portfolio as well as for enterprise SSDs from third parties.

Schooner's products are currently deployed by U.S. and international customers, including several Fortune 500 companies. Designed to fill the gap between stock do-it-yourself open source solutions and expensive high-end database deployments, Schooner's products deliver enterprise-grade performance, powering data center consolidation at a lower cost. Engineered for flash acceleration and enhanced with enterprise features, Schooner's products deliver up to five times the throughput of competing configurations. In addition, they deliver near in-memory response times to mission critical applications along with enterprise-grade replication and failover capabilities. In-memory database solutions are enabling breakthroughs in database and Business Intelligence applications that are only possible with solid state memories. Schooner's ability to combine DRAM and flash memory seamlessly in a single solution offers near DRAM performance at a lower cost.

"Schooner's products illustrate the benefits software developers and their customers can gain through flash optimization of enterprise solutions," said Greg Goelz, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Storage Solutions division at SanDisk."Schooner represents another step in SanDisk's expansion in the enterprise space. We welcome the Schooner team to the SanDisk family."

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.