Solarflare Communications, Inc, which made a name for itself by offering silicon that enabled 10 Gbps over twisted-pair copper cabling via 10GBase-T, has decided to leave that business. The company announced that it has sold its 10GBase-T assets to a merchant silicon vendor whose name it did not reveal.
The sale will enable Solarflare to focus on its 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) server adapters and software lines. Solarflare launched a family of 10GbE SFP+ and 10GBase-T server adapters as well as its OpenOnload and EnterpriseOnload application acceleration middleware in 2010 and Q1 2011.
"Our deal to sell the 10GBase-T business is good for our current installed base of 10GBase-T customers who will now benefit from having continued support for the best 10GBase-T product on the market," said Russell Stern, CEO at Solarflare. "We have now reached critical mass. Solarflare will continue to build on its success in the 10GbE server adapter market by growing share in high-frequency trading and HPC [high-performance computing] segments, and launching solutions targeting the virtualization and big data segments. We're excited by what the rest of 2011 will bring to the company."
Solarflare has also built an international network of over 25 value-added resellers and five distributors and now sells its server adapters through Dell, HP, and IBM. At the end of 2010, the Dell'Oro Group identified Solarflare as the fastest growing 10G server adapter company in a market segment, projected to grow to nearly $1.5 billion by 2015.
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