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Fusion-io changes its CEO again

Co-founder gets the hot seat

Flash card supplier Fusion-io has changed its CEO for a second time, with the incumbent becoming board chairman just 13 months after gaining the CEO mantle.

David Bradford became CEO in February 2009, replacing Don Basile, who had brought Bradford into Fusion-io as its general counsel. Fusion-io was founded by Rick White, currently its chief marketing officer, and David Flynn, Fusion's president and chief technology officer until very recently.

Don Basile went on to become the CEO of Violin Memory, which manufactures an externally-attached, multi-terabyte memory arrays: the 1010 Memory Appliance. This gels nicely with Fusion-io's offerings, as is can be attached to servers by the PCIe bus, the interconnect used by Fusion-io's server-hosted ioDrive line of products. These typically have capacities in the hundreds of gigabytes.

LSI has recently introduced product in the PCIe-connected server flash card area, using Seagate's Pulsar flash chips. Micron is also set on introducing a PCIe-connected flash product, and OCZ already does. The competition is picking up.

Bradford was responsible for the glamorous appointment of Steve Wozniak as chief scientist. Now he is going to concentrate on strengthening the board while Flynn takes over the running of the company. Oddly the CEO change happened under the covers because Fusion-io was going to reveal it next month in conjunction with other announcements. Currently the LinkedIn website has both Bradford and Flynn's entries saying they are both the CEO of Fusion. (Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader for spotting this.)

Rick White said: "[David Flynn] was moved into the office of CTO six months ago and took over the day-to-day running of the company. David Flynn was recommended by Bradford to become the CEO. The board went through a formal interview process and interviewed David Flynn and other [external] candidates and went for Flynn."

Bradford's tenure as CEO has seen the company build out its executive team with Dennis Wolf as the new chief financial officer, Jim Dawson as VP of sales, and others. Bradford's tenure as CEO has also seen Samsung grab a stake in the company and the involvement of Netscape founder Marc Andreessen.

The company's recent financial results have been sparkling and Bradford hands over on a high note. ®

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