Samsung has acquired Santa Clara, California based storage software specialist Nvelo. The terms of the deal remain undisclosed but all the staff and technology at Nvelo will be transferred to Samsung. Nvelo has been operating for two years and is a leading vendor or caching software, especially to SSD vendors; its Dataplex software is bundled with SSD drives made by OCZ Technology, Corsair and Crucial.
Nvolo Dataplex is designed for use in caching SSDs in systems with HDDs as their main storage device. The software detects the most often used files and data on the HDD and copies them to the SSD from where the system will then access the files as required. It’s a clever idea and attempts to provide users with a best-of-both-worlds solution of fast SSD-like disk operations and the high capacities of HDDs. Tests of caching SSDs have shown they are indeed useful and convenient additions to an HDD based system. The latest caching SSD review from HEXUS was of the 50GB Crucial Adrenaline SSD Cache, bundled with Nvelo Dataplex software, we rated the product a good 4 out of 5. At the time it cost about £45.
It’s not known if Samsung will make the Dataplex software proprietary now, as a competitive advantage. However it is obviously going to be useful for Samsung for bundling with its own SSD drives and hybrid drives. “The acquisition of NVELO will enable us to extend our ability to provide SSD related storage solutions to customers. We are pleased with this transaction as the employees of NVELO share our vision to take SSD storage into the next-generation of performance and reliability,” said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president of Flash product & technology, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics.
