Western Digital agreed on September 9, 2013, to acquire Virident through its wholly owned subsidiary HGST. The transaction targeted enterprise, cloud and data-center workloads that used PCIe-based server-side flash. HGST reported the acquisition closed on October 17, 2013, and Western Digital later recorded a $613 million final purchase price allocation in its fiscal 2014 Form 10-K.
What Western Digital announced
Western Digital and Virident announced a definitive merger agreement on September 9, 2013. Under the agreement, HGST would acquire Virident for approximately $685 million in cash. The announcement also described an estimated enterprise value of approximately $645 million after deducting Virident’s estimated cash balance at closing.
Those figures describe the transaction at announcement: the cash consideration and the announcement’s estimate of value net of cash. They are not the same measure as the purchase-price allocation later reported for accounting purposes.
When the acquisition closed
Western Digital announced completion on October 17, 2013. Virident was to be integrated into HGST, making HGST the operating home for the acquired business and technology.
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What Virident sold
PCIe server-side flash
Virident provided enterprise flash storage installed close to, or inside, application servers through PCIe connections. The company positioned the technology for virtualization, databases, cloud computing and web-scale applications—workloads where reducing storage latency and increasing server-local throughput can matter.
FlashMAX II
FlashMAX II was described as a low-profile flash card. Virident’s backgrounder says the product was introduced in 2012. The product descriptions and reliability claims in the announcement were company statements, not independent benchmark results.
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FlashMAX Connect
FlashMAX Connect was software described as enabling a shared server-side flash tier with enterprise-class reliability. In practical terms, the software was intended to make flash installed in servers usable as a coordinated storage tier rather than as isolated local capacity.
Why HGST wanted Virident
Western Digital presented the deal as an extension of HGST’s enterprise SSD business. Virident added PCIe-based server flash and storage software to HGST’s existing enterprise storage portfolio, giving Western Digital a way to address flash deployed directly in data-center servers.
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In the fiscal 2014 accounting discussion, Western Digital said the goodwill associated with the transaction was primarily attributable to expected benefits from creating server-side flash solutions using Virident’s core technology. That is management’s stated strategic rationale and expectation; it is not evidence that those benefits were later realized or independently measured.
At the time, Western Digital quoted IDC’s forecast that enterprise SSD revenue would grow from $2.5 billion in 2012 to $7 billion by 2017. This was a forecast cited in the 2013 announcement, not an independently verified result for 2017.
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Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.“We have established a competitive position in the enterprise SSD space and with our recently announced acquisitions we are increasing our commitment to become an even more significant player in this high growth segment.”
Steve Milligan, Western Digital president and chief executive officer, quoted in the September 9, 2013 announcement
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How the deal values differ
| Figure | What it represents | Date and context |
|---|---|---|
| Approximately $685 million | Cash transaction price announced by Western Digital | September 9, 2013 agreement announcement |
| Approximately $645 million | Estimated enterprise value after subtracting Virident’s estimated cash balance at closing | September 9, 2013 announcement estimate |
| $613 million | Final purchase price allocation recorded by Western Digital, including acquired assets, liabilities and goodwill | Fiscal 2014 Form 10-K, for the October 17, 2013 acquisition |
| $506 million | Goodwill in that final allocation; Western Digital primarily linked it to expected server-side flash solution benefits | Fiscal 2014 Form 10-K |
The $613 million accounting allocation should not be read as a correction to the announced $685 million cash price. The numbers come from different stages and use different accounting concepts: one is the announced consideration, while the other is the final allocation of the acquisition cost among recognized assets, liabilities and goodwill.
What the acquisition means for readers today
This was a 2013 enterprise-storage transaction, not a current retail SSD launch. The available record does not establish whether FlashMAX II or FlashMAX Connect remain available, supported or purchasable, nor does it identify a consumer or small-business buying path. Current product availability and support should therefore be verified separately rather than inferred from the acquisition announcements.
The clearest historical takeaway is that Western Digital used HGST to expand from enterprise SSDs into server-side PCIe flash and related software, betting on growing data-center demand. The announcements describe the intended strategy and management’s expectations; they do not, by themselves, establish later market performance or product results.
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