Violin Memory®, Inc., (NYSE:VMEM) a leading provider of award-winning all-flash storage arrays, announced worldwide availability of an innovative, flexible pricing model that enables customers to align storage investment with capacity as it is consumed, along with four new Windows Flash Array (WFA) configurations.

For Violin Memory authorized resellers and their end-users, this offering addresses the need for all-flash storage solutions that meet the performance requirements of business critical applications with the comprehensive data services provided by the Windows Flash Array. In addition, the available capacity footprints allow their end-users to buy what they need now and cost-effectively expand as business grows.

Violin Memory is adding 17.5, 26, 35, and 52TB configurations to the WFA product family. The new entry points address the market for lower raw capacity all-flash offerings, while delivering the enterprise-class resiliency and data services as the currently shipping WFA-64. The workhorse WFA configuration - with 70TB of raw capacity, scalable to 280TB - was announced in April and offers enterprise data services such as replication, snapshots, thin provisioning, deduplication, and compression.

“Our latest offerings deliver the transformative economics, performance, and data services of the Windows Flash Array to customers who prefer to take a more incremental approach towards the all-flash data center,” said Eric Herzog, CMO of Violin Memory. “The pay-as-you-grow option lets customers immediately benefit from WFA enterprise data services and performance capabilities while aligning capital expenditure with capacity as it is consumed.”

In addition to new capacity and price points, Violin’s unique “pay-as-you-grow” pricing model allows customers to scale their storage non-disruptively through new capacity software license-based expansion options that deliver 8.8TB increments of raw all-flash capacity.

This pay-as-you-grow approach enables customers to deploy the WFA and immediately benefit from its high performance and enterprise data services while increasing capacity over time.

The flexibility of the WFA doesn’t end with capacity, as customers have a choice in how they interconnect the all-flash array with their existing infrastructure. The WFA family supports either 56 Gb FDR InfiniBand or 10 Gb Ethernet. In both cases, customers benefit from the efficiency and high performance afforded by SMB Direct and the rest of the SMB 3.0 feature set.

In addition, the WFA supports NFS 3.0 and NFS 4.1 for connectivity with application servers running operating systems such as Linux and UNIX. WFA-based file shares are simultaneously available as Windows file shares over SMB 3 and as NFS exports to simplify data sharing across the data center. There are no artificial data silos separating SMB- and NFS-based applications with the WFA - just seamless integration of high performance, easily accessible all-flash storage.

Jointly developed with Microsoft Corp., the WFA is the first all-flash high-performance array solution powered by Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 to deliver a rich set of storage features and data services for the enterprise. The unmatched performance of the WFA transforms data center economics, reducing CAPEX, OPEX, and TCO by receiving more value from their existing IT investments.

The Windows Flash Array enables enterprise workloads, including Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, and Windows Server Hyper-V for both server and desktop virtualization, as well as enterprise-wide file servers to meet the needs of global enterprises, while refocusing IT expenditure towards business innovation.

The Violin Windows Flash Array family will be featured at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2014, being held July 13-17 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center (WEWCC) in Washington, D.C. Booth # 2325A.

ANALYST QUOTES

“Few IT organizations today have the luxury of limiting themselves to a single storage protocol. On the other hand too many unified file and SAN storage systems emphasize one protocol while compromising the performance of the others. The Violin Windows Flash Array changes that by delivering high performance SMB 3, and NFS storage access without compromise.”
Marc Staimer, President, Dragon Slayer Consulting

“The pay-as-you-grow option helps customers immediately benefit from the WFA’s enterprise data services while paying for additional capacity only when it is required. This is a great option for businesses that would prefer to move their workloads to an all-flash storage solution in a more incremental fashion.”
George Crump, Founder, Storage Switzerland

“Violin Memory’s new smaller size models and acquisition strategy of pay-as-you-grow recognizes the significance of flash for mid and enterprise markets. This opens up new opportunities for Violin and their partners as IT strives to deliver higher level performance for applications such as VDI and critical databases.”
Camberley Bates, Managing Director, Evaluator Group

“The new array capacities are appealing to businesses that want the transformative performance and economics of the Windows Flash Array but who don't need a large array today. In addition, users will favor them for secondary deployments in remote data centers.”
Robin Harris, President and Chief Analyst, TechnoQWAN

CHANNEL PARTNER QUOTES

“Violin Memory shares our philosophy that in the channel partner ecosystem, 'less is more.' We chose to work with Violin because they understand the importance of collaborative partnerships and bringing in deep industry and technical expertise. The breadth of Violin's portfolio and the ease of partnering with them are critical to our mutual success. In addition, our business comes from both the sale of hardware as well as the delivery of services. Violin's new channel program allows us to deliver on both.”
Kush Hathi, CEO, SoftNet Solutions

“Violin has shown us that they are committed to supporting their partners with programs to drive revenue growth while delivering mission-critical solutions to our customers. Products such as the Windows Flash Array will help solidify the long-term relationships with our mutual customers. The flexible pricing model will allow our customers to pay only for the capacity that they need and actually use. This is a huge win for those in the trenches of IT resource constraints.”
Mick Cooper, Head of Solution Sales, Coal IT

“For us, the Violin Memory partnership illustrates the ideal partner synergy. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we are pleased that the Windows Flash Array provides onsite high-performance all-flash storage solutions for mid-size implementations that can easily interact with a Microsoft cloud environment. The ability to replicate and migrate data between onsite and cloud repositories addresses a critical need in our customer base.”
Chris Young, Manager of Advanced Technology, Netrix

“The Windows Flash Array launch is a welcome boon. It makes the incentive program for the product line being offered by Violin Memory, a substantial and viable business opportunity for both our customers and us. The new configurations for the product family address the demand for lower capacity all-flash offerings, without sacrificing the data management and enterprise features of the higher capacity models.”
Walter Borgia, Sales Director, Lake Solutions

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About Violin Memory, Inc.

Business in a Flash. Violin Memory transforms the speed of business with high performance, always available, low cost management of critical business information and applications. Violin’s All Flash optimized solutions accelerate breakthrough CAPEX and OPEX savings for building the next generation data center. Violin’s Flash Fabric Architecture™ (FFA) speeds data delivery with chip-to-chassis performance optimization that achieves lower consistent latency and cost per transaction for Cloud, Enterprise and Virtualized mission-critical applications. Violin's All Flash Arrays and Appliances, and enterprise data management software solutions enhance agility and mobility while revolutionizing data center economics. Founded in 2005, Violin Memory is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. For more information, visit www.violin-memory.com. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/violinmemory

Forward Looking Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements with respect to: the business, economic, financial, performance and other benefits that customers and others may realize as the result of using WFA and/or the Pay-As-You-Grow Capacity Pricing Option; and statements relating to Violin Memory’s business plans and strategy. Additional risks and uncertainties that could affect Violin Memory's business performance and financial results are included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," in Violin Memory's annual report on Form 10-Q, which was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and which is available on company’s investor relations website at investor.violin-memory.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. All forward-looking statements in this public announcement are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof, and Violin Memory does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

All Violin Memory news releases (financial, acquisitions, manufacturing, products, technology, etc.) are issued exclusively by Business Wire and are immediately thereafter posted on the company's external website, www.violin-memory.com. Violin, Violin Memory, the Violin Memory logo, and Flash Fabric Architecture (FFA) are trademarks of Violin Memory, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.