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E-mail“We’re moving from the information age to the media age,” states David A. Flynn, chairman, president and CEO of six-year-old
Fusion-io Inc. (NYSE: FIO). He points to connected devices like smartphones and tablet computers, which have shifted the focus from building faster devices to building faster networks. “For example, consider what it takes for a program on your phone to recognize a song and tell you the title, or to do live face-recognition searches on a crowd of people in a security video over a network,” Flynn suggests.
Courtesy Fusion-io
When co-founding Fusion-io, Flynn observed that data centers delivering information to these connected devices needed to run more efficiently to meet future demand. So, armed with a BS in computer science from Brigham Young University and experience in software research and development, Flynn, 34, realized that researchers needed to rethink the basic design of current computers. “We had to eliminate complexity,” says Flynn. “By starting with a clean slate, we freed researchers to ignore the traditional design of computer systems and start afresh.”
Enter Wozniak
That mindset led to a more straightforward memory design using solid-state drives, which helped the startup land $115.5 million in venture capital and prompted Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak to call Fusion-io’s approach “revolutionary.” In fact, the usually reticent Wozniak was so impressed that he agreed to become the company’s chief scientist in 2008. “The technology marketplace has not seen such capacity for innovation and radical transformation since the mainframe computer was replaced by the home computer,” Wozniak enthused when he announced that he would join the company.
Previously, solid-state drives had been treated like mechanical hard drives, which failed to take advantage of the memory chips’ speed. “It was like trying to suck an elephant through a straw,” says Flynn. So rather than simply replacing hard drives with solid-state memory, Fusion-io’s design treats solid-state drives as if they were part of direct memory. The approach means eliminating bottlenecks in the servers and allowing the chips to operate at full speed. “We’re getting rid of the middleman here,” Flynn explains, boosting the performance of data centers by as much as 10 times without having to add more servers, according to Fusion-io and some independent tests.
JUST THE FACTS
Headquarters
Salt Lake CityRevenue
$197.2 million (fiscal 2011)Market cap*
$2.2 billionEmployees
430Listed since
June 9, 2011*As of 10/17/2011
As more people use more portable devices needing even faster access to information, demand from corporate enterprise customers is growing. “We now have over 2,000 clients,” says Flynn, “from Facebook to Wall Street.” Fusion-io reported fourth-quarter 2011 revenues of $71.7 million, up from just $10.9 million for the same period the previous year, and a net income of $5.8 million, compared with a net loss of $11.9 million in the same quarter in 2010.
Memory for All
Flynn credits an important decision made early on with putting Fusion-io on the fast track: The company would work with all current systems on the market. Because it is agnostic when it comes to different operating systems, says Flynn, Fusion-io’s products have been widely adopted by hardware makers such as IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ). “This is why we have some of the leading operating systems experts on staff,” says the CEO, explaining that the company’s 430 employees include experts in Linux, Oracle Solaris, Windows and Apple’s OS X.
Flynn says two competing trends will keep Fusion-io humming. In addition to the major shift to cloud computing and the accompanying vast memory storage that requires, he explains, a number of customers are taking back their own computer storage. They can do this, he says, because Fusion-io’s memory systems require fewer servers and thus less overhead. “Essentially,” he observes, “they are creating their own private clouds.”
The company continues to look for ways to squeeze even more performance out of its technology, partly through acquisitions. Using part of the $222.7 million it raised through its June IPO, Fusion-io recently purchased IO Turbine Inc., a software company specializing in using flash memory in virtual memory designs.
Flynn expects Fusion-io’s breakthrough to catalyze innovation as improved data-center performance allows customers to create new services. And he expresses no doubt that other aspects of existing networks need improvement. “Now,” says Flynn, “with processors running at full speed without the memory drag, the speed of Internet connections becomes a bottleneck again.”
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