The acquisition represents IBM’s hefty bet on corporate and enterprise SSD-based storage system markets for server computers.
Founded in 1978, TMS is a privately held company based in Houston that has designed and shipped high-performance solid state storage solutions.
Unlike hard disk drives that rely on spinning disks and robotic arms, solid state systems are high-speed data storage solutions based on Flash or RAM memory, bringing forth and back data between a CPU and a memory system faster than HDDs. It also consumes less power.
Although the company has kept a low-profile in consumer electronics and market, TMS has been better knows in industrial and military applications for its RamSan family of shared rackmount systems and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) cards.
A good fit
"The TMS strategy and solution set align well with our Smarter Computing approach to information technology by helping clients realize increased performance and efficiencies at lower costs," said Brian Truskowski, general manager, Systems Storage and Networking, IBM.
"Solid state technology, in particular, is a critical component of our new Smarter Storage approach to the design and deployment of storage infrastructures, and part of a holistic approach that exploits flash in conjunction with disk and tape technologies to solve complex problems," added he.
Market research firm IDC estimates that the amount of SSD solutions being shipped into the enterprise will grow significantly, reaching nearly 3 exabytes by 2016.
Following acquisition close, IBM plans to invest in and support the TMS product portfolio, and will look to integrate TMS technologies into a variety of solutions including storage, servers, software, and PureSystems offerings.
"IBM understands the positive and dramatic impact that solid state technology can have on storage and server infrastructures, and once the acquisition is complete we look forward to advancing the technology even further. With the global reach of IBM, we expect to grow the engineering staff and product lines much faster than we could before," said Holly Frost, founder and CEO of TMS.
According to market consulting firm Objective Analysis, TMS is the world's oldest SSD maker, which had built the storage system around SRAM and DRAM.
Since its inception, the company had single-handedly focused on RAM-based replicas of HDDs until it aggressively entered the NAND storage market 4 years ago.
When NAND prices dropped below those of DRAM, TMS followed other companies' lead to get into NAND-based storage, tapping into its deep expertise in managing memory in a storage environment to produce top-quality products, the market consulting firm.
Prior to its entry into the NAND market the company sold DRAM SSDs boasting 200,000-3.2 million IOPS, and today its PCIe NAND cards run at 1.5 million IOPS.
IBM’s focus on Smarter Planet, Smarter Storage, and Smarter Computing server platform was a good magnet for the acquisition, analyzed Objective Analysis.
IBM bets that the enterprise solid state market will see several billion dollars in added growth to the enterprise computing market over the next 3-4 years.
TMS employs approximately 100 people. The deal is expected to close later in 2012.