IBM's TMS buy signals it's heading for a divorce from Fusion-io | ZDNet

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IBM is to acquire flash hardware company Texas Memory Systems — a move that suggests the partnership bewteen Big Blue and Fusion-io could well end in divorce. Its not so much that Fusion-io has been seeing other people — it has partnerships with Cisco, Dell and HP — its more that it has been getting awfully loud about its plans to use its hardware products as a beachhead for an expansive storage operating system via technologies like ION and IO Turbine. IBMs hardware strategy is one of fierce independence, with the company developing its own chips, chassis, networking bits and pieces, mainframes and storage gear. Update: 17:08BST When I asked Fusion-io what they thought about the deal, chief executive David Flynn said: "All of our OEMs have had multiple sources for customers, so todays announcement from IBM does not change our existing relationship with the company. Fusion-io drives much of the demand from customers, and we believe our solutions win, because they offer industry-leading performance and reliability at a competitive cost point.

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