14 DAY TRIAL // When OCZ first announced that it had reached an agreement with Indilinx to buy the company for $32 million in stock, their boards of directors expected for the transaction to close in mid-April, but the two outfits have somehow managed to move a lot more quickly than anyone believed it was possible, as they just announced that the deal is now complete.
The two companies have a long history together as the first SSD released by OCZ, the 2008 Vertex, was powered by a Barefoot controller, the same IC that is used for the current enterprise class Z-Drive R2 PCI-Express SSD series.
More importantly, back then, Indilinx was the only company that was able to compete with Intel's X25-M drives, which were the fastest SSDs available in the market at that time.
Unfortunately for Indilinx, all that changed when SandForce came into the market and introduced the SF-1200/SF-1500 SSD processors that managed to become the de-facto controller used for high-performance drives.
The company, however, still hold about 20 patents and patent applications and its high-performance eMMC 4.4x controller that replaces SSDs in consumer electronic devices such as smartphones, tablet PCs, GPS units, and netbooks, could bring OCZ an important advantage in the mobile market.
“Producing SSD controllers for OEM integration and use within our own products significantly enhances our ability to capitalize on worldwide demand for SSDs, and yields cost reductions which help make SSDs more accessible to potential customers,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group.
“This combination puts OCZ in an advantaged position as one of the few SSD manufacturers with captive controller production.
“The acquisition will help to increase both revenue and gross margins as we vertically integrate controller technology, and it also provides critical support for current and future Enterprise and OEM opportunities,” concluded the company's CEO.