OTTAWA, Canada – May 7, 2013 – Diablo Technologies, a proven innovator in memory system interface products, today announced Kevin Wagner has joined its executive team as Vice President of Marketing. Wagner’s nearly 20 years’ experience and leadership in product marketing, program management and strategic alliances, primarily in enterprise markets, further expands the talents of the Diablo executive organization.

Wagner comes to Diablo from OCZ Technology, a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives for computing devices and systems, where he served as Vice President, Product and Program Management and developed market strategy for Enterprise SSDs and acceleration software products. Wagner previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices, where he forged strategic GPU and software alliances with multiple Tier-1 companies and system OEMs, including development of a complete 64-bit device driver ecosystem for AMD’s industry-standard x86-64 instruction set. He established and directed the vertical market software organization for AMD, successfully building business relationships with Fortune 500 enterprises in financial services, manufacturing, telco and other vertical market segments. Prior to AMD, Wagner held management positions at ATI Technologies and SEGA. Wagner holds a B.S. degree in economics with a minor in computer science from California State University, Sacramento.

“Kevin’s experience driving successful marketing strategies in the enterprise product marketplace and his software-oriented background make him an ideal choice to lead those initiatives here at Diablo,” said Riccardo Badalone, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Diablo Technologies. “His addition to Diablo’s executive team further strengthens the company as we expand our market focus and customer development. We look forward to tapping Kevin’s knowledge and energy as we prepare to launch our groundbreaking Memory Channel Storage architecture and product platform.”

“The enterprise market is at a critical inflection point in balancing heavy computational power with high-performance, low latency storage systems, while lowering capital and operational expenses,” said Wagner.  “It’s extremely exciting to join Diablo as we solve this challenge in the enterprise with a new storage architecture that provides both exceptional performance and disruptive economics in addressing these requirements in key growth market segments.”

OTTAWA, Canada and NEWARK, Calif.– April 24, 2013 – SMART Storage Systems, Inc., an innovative enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) technology provider, and Diablo Technologies, Inc., a proven innovator in memory system interface products, today announced an exclusive relationship to combine SMART Storage Systems’ award-winning Guardian™ Technology Platform with Diablo’s Memory Channel Storage™ (MCS™) to usher in a new era of Flash storage. The development and marketing partnership will result in a new class of ultra-low latency (ULL) SSDs and system accelerators, transforming enterprise server, virtualization and cloud environments.

The fusion of Diablo’s Memory Channel Storage architecture with SMART Storage Systems’ Guardian Technology Platform creates a new ULL Flash-SSD tier for enterprise servers and storage systems. This new ULL SSD enables DRAM-like performance and enterprise-class Flash endurance and reliability, while leveraging cost-effective multi-level cell (MLC) NAND Flash. SMART Storage Systems’ proprietary Guardian Technology Platform drives additional endurance from cost-effective MLC Flash through a proprietary suite of enterprise features and endurance enhancement technologies.

“Flash technology is a key building block in the enterprise, with the caveat that greater performance, higher capacity and more cost-effective solutions are required to fuel specific needs of applications like data analytics and the full promise of cloud computing,” said Jeff Janukowicz, Research Director for Solid State Storage at IDC. “Advances in system design, as is anticipated through this partnership, will enable volume deployments and NAND Flash to transform the enterprise data center.”

The combination of MCS and the Guardian Technology Platform will provide systems with dramatic improvements in latency, transaction throughput, IO bandwidth, density, scalability and operating cost over a wide range of enterprise-level deployments when compared to Flash-based designs using PCIe or SAS/SATA-based SSDs. The new ULL SSDs are expected to provide 50 percent higher transaction rates with 80 percent lower latency in database caching and OLTP applications. For virtualized environments, the MCS-Guardian system solution is expected to enable 10X more virtual machines per server while reducing DRAM requirements by over 70 percent.

“This really changes everything,” said John Scaramuzzo, president of SMART Storage Systems. “The convergence of Diablo’s groundbreaking MCS technology and our award-winning Guardian Technology Platform is not just about re-architecting storage, but re-architecting the integration of servers, storage and Flash acceleration. We are setting a new standard for ULL storage in the enterprise, improving performance over currently available SSDs, including PCIe-based drives.”

“SMART Storage Systems was the logical partner for us in this development effort. SMART Storage Systems specializes in meeting enterprise requirements for quality, endurance and performance using the most cost-effective Flash media, and its Guardian Technology Platform has harnessed the physics of NAND Flash to make new Flash applications possible,” said Diablo founder and CEO Riccardo Badalone. “Our partnership with SMART Storage Systems will accelerate Memory Channel Storage product innovation and fuel new deployments of Flash storage in enterprise data centers, which are currently restricted by traditional CPU/Flash interfaces and the cost limitations of providing enterprise-grade NAND Flash.”

Under the terms of the agreement SMART Storage Systems and Diablo will jointly develop the new ULL SSD product. The product will be exclusively sold by SMART Storage Systems and will be jointly supported by the two companies’ world-class customer support teams.

About SMART Storage Systems
SMART Storage Systems is a technology leader in the design, development and deployment of current and next-generation enterprise solid-state storage products. Combining leading-edge, enterprise-class design and proven world-class support, SMART Storage Systems leverages its deep expertise in Flash and enterprise storage technology. SMART Storage Systems delivers high-quality, high-reliability solutions to a broad customer base including tier one storage and server OEMs. In support of these designs, SMART Storage Systems provides award-winning innovations in solid-state storage technology, such as NAND high-endurance Guardian™ technology, to a variety of customers in the enterprise storage, enterprise server, data center, defense and industrial markets. SMART Storage Systems is part of the SMART family of global companies. See www.smartstoragesys.com for more information.

About Diablo Technologies
Founded in 2003, Diablo is successfully delivering products that enhance the performance and capability of memory system designs. Diablo’s innovative Memory Channel Storage technology platform is leveraging the disruptive capability of NAND-flash and future Non-Volatile Memory technologies to enable increased levels of application performance supported by a new class of enterprise server and storage system designs.The Diablo executive management team, now developing its third family of memory interface solutions, has decades of experience in system architecture, chip-set design and software development at companies including Nortel Networks, Matrox Graphics, Goal Semiconductor, BroadTel Communications, ENQ Semiconductor, IceFyre Semiconductor, MosaidTechologies and Huawei.

OTTAWA, Canada – March 19, 2013 – Diablo Technologies, a proven innovator in memory system interface products, today announced that it has closed an additional $7.5 million of funding, increasing the total equity investment of its most recent funding round to $36 million. The oversubscription includes a new investment from U.S. Venture Partners and additional funding from existing investors. In conjunction with the new investment, USVP Partner Chris Rust joins Diablo’s board of directors.

The additional funding will be used to support Diablo’s upcoming launch of its groundbreaking Memory Channel Storage™ (MCS) technology platform and provides the company with increased ability to market and distribute its disruptive technology across a broader set of applications. The soon-to-be-announced MCS products enable substantial improvements in transaction processing and data analysis within compute-servers, enterprise datacenters and cloud-computing facilities worldwide.

“As the Diablo team works aggressively to bring our innovative technology platform to market, it’s great to have the additional vote of confidence from USVP that we are solving a very big problem and enabling the next big step of flash market deployment,” said Riccardo Badalone, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Diablo Technologies. “We thank USVP for their contribution to the funding round. The added resources will help us introduce a truly innovative set of products, as well as continue to strengthen our board of directors with the addition of Chris.”

“Behind the disruptive technology platform that Diablo is preparing to roll out is a great team of energetic and passionate people working to make Memory Channel Storage a reality for customers,” said Rust. “I’m excited to have the opportunity to join in Diablo’s funding round and am looking forward to working closely with Riccardo and the team as they expand their market scope and scale their business prospects to even greater heights.”

USVP joins previously announced investors Battery Ventures, Celtic House Venture Partners, BDC Venture Capital, and Hasso Plattner Ventures. See release here: http://tinyurl.com/d9l2ral

OTTAWA, Canada – January 30, 2013 – Diablo Technologies, a proven innovator in memory system interface products, today announced the formation of a Technology Advisory Board comprised of enterprise IT industry innovators to participate in the strategic direction of the company’s Memory Channel Storage™ (MCS) technology from an applications perspective. The Diablo Technology Advisory Board will be chaired by company Chief Technology Officer Maher Amer and is comprised of independent members: John Borkenhagen, CTO at IBM; David Cohen, Senior Technologist at EMC; Michael Cornwell, Vice President and Founding Engineer at Pure Storage; Thomas Fry, Director of New Technology Pathfinding at Samsung Semiconductor, along with other industry thought leaders.

“As we prepare to launch our line of Memory Channel Storage products that enable next-generation enterprise server and storage system designs, we have set our sights on unprecedented levels of performance for current and future applications,” said Amer. “To that end, we have assembled a group of top industry innovators to help refine the development of our revolutionary NAND-flash system solutions built on Diablo’s MCS architecture and deliver new levels of performance, scalability and integration for enterprise application developers and end users.”

In November 2012, Diablo announced closing of a $28M equity investment round to fund completion of its groundbreaking Memory Channel Storage technology platform and to-be-announced system products that provide substantial improvements in transaction processing and data analysis within compute-servers, enterprise datacenters and cloud-computing facilities worldwide. The funding round was led by Battery Ventures and included additional financing from Celtic House Venture Partners, BDC Venture Capital, and Hasso Plattner Ventures.

About Diablo Technologies

Founded in 2003, Diablo is successfully delivering products that enhance the performance and capability of memory system designs. Diablo’s innovative Memory Channel Storage technology platform is leveraging the disruptive capability of NAND-flash and future Non-Volatile Memory technologies to enable increased levels of application performance supported by a new class of enterprise server and storage system designs.

The Diablo executive management team, now developing its third family of memory interface solutions, has decades of experience in system architecture, chip-set design and software development at companies including Nortel Networks, Matrox Graphics, Goal Semiconductor, BroadTel Communications, ENQ Semiconductor, IceFyre Semiconductor, Mosaid Techologies and Huawei.

Riccardo Badalone, founder and Chief Executive Officer commented: “Over the past two years Diablo Technologies has developed an innovative memory channel-based solid-state storage platform. With this equity funding we are accelerating the completion of a system solution including hardware, software and a chip-set that will deliver breakthroughs in system performance and flash storage density for analytic data processing, web-page serving, cloud computing and other server-based enterprise computing applications. We are pleased to welcome Scott Tobin and Alex Benik both of Battery Ventures, and Yaron Valler from Hasso Plattner Ventures to our Board of Directors.”

“Storage is undergoing the type of a technological revolution that we see only once every few decades, and it’s an exciting time to be involved with the entrepreneurs and technologists who are leading this new wave,” said Scott Tobin, Battery General Partner. “Today’s emerging companies are attacking tough strategic problems, and creating tremendous value across the enterprise-storage stack. We believe Diablo Technologies has the technology and creativity to usher in the next phase of innovation in NAND-flash storage. This investment is the perfect complement to our recent success in the flash storage space, with Anobit (flash memory controllers) being acquired by Apple, and XtremIO (scale-out flash arrays) being acquired by EMC.”

“Existing investors BDC and Celtic House are tremendously excited to see the evolution of Diablo being positioned to redefine in-memory computing,” said Tom Valis of Celtic House Venture Partners.

“John’s demonstrated leadership in the development and integration of cutting-edge technologies will be an invaluable asset to Diablo. His experience and skills will be key as we roll out innovative and game changing products into the enterprise industry,” said Riccardo Badalone, Diablo Technologies CEO. “John’s extensive ASIC and system development experience will strengthen our company, help maintain our tradition of engineering excellence and ensure we can deliver successfully to our customers.”

John has been at the center of complex ASIC and system development since his contributions at Nortel Networks in the mid 90`s. Most recently, John was the Director of R&D at Huawei’s Ottawa Design center, responsible for leading the ASIC design activities. Prior to joining Huawei he held the position of VP of Engineering at Edgewater Computer Systems and Director of Design Engineering for the Altera Ottawa Technology Center. He was previously Vice President of Engineering at Silicon Access Networks, a network processor startup. John holds 10 patents in the areas of switch architecture, algorithms for networking applications, and traffic management. He is a graduate of the University of Waterloo, with a B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering.

“I was drawn to Diablo because of its technology and the exciting new products that are being developed.” John commented. “This is an exciting time, as more and more customers realize the potential of Diablo’s solutions to transform the server industry and advanced computer architecture. I look forward to growing the engineering team, building on the company’s momentum in the marketplace.”

Diablo Technologies is pleased to announce that Tom Woodard has joined the company as Vice President of Sales. In his new role, Tom will be responsible for developing and coordinating Diablo’s sales strategy across market segments, customers and geographies.

”Tom’s leadership and his expertise in addressing the needs of the OEMs will be invaluable to Diablo Technologies as we enter our next phase of growth. Tom will have an immediate impact on our engagement and relationship with key lead customers.” said Riccardo Badalone, Diablo Technologies CEO.

Woodard brings over 30 years of computer and storage technology sales experience to Diablo Technologies. His previous experience includes developing the Enterprise sales and product strategies for SSD provider Anobit Technologies (recently acquired by Apple). He was also Sales Director for PMC-Sierra and was Vice President of sales at both Dot Hill Systems and Adaptec.
“I am honored to join Diablo Technologies and look forward to playing an integral role in the company’s growth.” said Tom Woodard. “Diablo Technologies has the potential to transform the server industry with extremely innovative storage technology that will increase performance and improve the cost structure of blades and dense servers. This is a great opportunity for me to drive the adoption of new and exciting storage products. “

Diablo Technologies announced today that Mark Stibitz has joined the company’s Board of Directors, effective immediately. Mr. Stibitz brings to Diablo Technologies over thirty years of business management, global market strategy and product development experience and expertise spanning the semiconductor and enterprise storage markets.

“Mark is an excellent addition to our Board of Directors, where he will have an immediate impact on our future technology and business initiatives,” said Riccardo Badalone, Diablo Tecnologies CEO. “With his deep knowledge of the enterprise storage industry, Mark will be instrumental in helping us expand on our core expertise in high performance memory subsystems to drive forward new initiatives in solid state storage and IO acceleration technology.”

Currently President and Co-Founder of Adaptive Chips, Inc., an early-stage Silicon Valley start-up, Mr. Stibitz is also Principal of Peak Value Solutions, LLC, a technology management consulting firm. He also served as Board Director of Anobit, a leading provider of flash controller and enterprise-class solid state drive products and technology.

From 2001 to 2010, he served as Vice President and General Manager of PMC-Sierras Enterprise Storage Division, which he helped to grow from its inception into the companys largest business segment via innovative, market leading products and strategic tier-one OEM customer engagements.

Prior to joining PMC-Sierra, Mr. Stibitz was Vice President and General Manager at Agere Systems, Inc. (formally Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group) from 1996 to 2001, with responsibility for Ageres communications IC business in data networking, networked computing and storage area network applications. Previously, he was ASIC Product Line Director at AT&T Microelectronics, and earlier, a member of AT&T Bell Labs technical staff for fifteen years. Mr. Stibitz holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Lafayette College and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu engineering honor societies.

“I’m pleased to have this opportunity to work with Diablo Technologies, a company that has been consistently pushing the envelope of memory sub-system performance and which is now poised to break new ground in the world of enterprise storage solutions.” said Mark Stibitz. “In my role as Director, I look forward to helping the Company develop key industry partnerships to accelerate adoption of its unique and innovative I/O acceleration solutions in enterprise and datacenter applications.”