$8 billion NetApp is buying a storage company for $870 million in cash

Storage tech giant NetApp has entered into an agreement to buy SolidFire, a solid-state storage startup, for $870 million in an all-cash deal, per a press release.

SolidFire's specialty is in making storage systems for enterprise data centers that use solid-state flash drives, rather than older and more inefficient spinning platter hard drives.

In plainer English, SolidFire helps enterprises build their storage systems using tech that's more like the hard drive in the most recent MacBook. It's a quieter, faster, and more energy-efficient way of doing things.

It gives NetApp, a publicly-traded Fortune 500 company with an $8 billion market cap, a little extra leverage as it works to build its appeal with big enterprises, who are looking to make their own data centers as efficient and scalable as those offered by the likes of Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

That's an especially important goal, as business customers struggle to store all the data generated and collected by the rising tide of mobile apps and web services. NetApp has also signed partnerships with companies like Google to further its stake in the cloud business, as competitive pressures mount.

Meanwhile, this is looking like a strong exit for SolidFire, which had raised $150 million in venture funding since its founding in 2010.