Former HP Exec Robison Takes Board Position At Fusion-io

Robison will serve on the Fusion-io board's Audit Committee and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, and he'll be tasked with driving the Salt Lake City-based company's partnerships with server systems vendors and other technology firms, Chairman and CEO David Flynn said in a statement.

Robison joined HP in its 2001 acquisition of Compaq, where he was CTO and head of strategy. In addition to being a member of HP's Executive Council, Robison was responsible for oversight of HP's R&D investments and mergers and acquisitions, including Mercury, Opsware, EDS and 3Com.

As head of HP's Office of Strategy and Technology division (OS&T), Robison also led the company's HP Cloud Services, Vertica and Business Solutions incubation initiatives.

Fusion-io is currently ramping production of its new 10-TB ioDrive Octal, a Flash-based storage acceleration device that integrates eight 1.28-TB MLC Flash-based ioMemory modules. ioDrive Octal was originally built as a custom project for the Lawrence Livermore and Sandia laboratories, Rick White, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Fusion-io, told CRN earlier this month.

In August, Fusion-io acquired IO Turbine, a developer of caching solutions for virtualized environments, for around $95 million. With that deal, Fusion-io launched its first formal channel program after previously relying on its OEM partners' channels.

Fusion-io had its IPO in June, and its shares jumped 18 percent on their first day of trading. However, Fusion-io shares have dropped nearly 50 percent in the past month after reaching a high of $41.74 on Nov. 16.

The company's best known executive is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who joined in 2008 as chief scientist.