Storage startup Fusion-io apparently hired IT veteran Woody Hutsell as its new director of product management.  Hutsell comes to Fusion-io from data storage firm Vion, where he served as an application acceleration practice director and an accounting executive since October 2010.  Prior to that Hutsell worked at Texas Memory Systems for about a decade, in various positions including EVP of sales and marketing, and president of the company.

“… it seems that hardware and product is more his style, as he left Vion to join PCIe flash company Fusion-io,” reports the Register.  “TMS now has its own PCIe product and competition is underway between the supplier and Fusion-io.  Hutsell will oversee product development – and with his long-term solid state storage background, he will be well-placed to do so.”

Fusion-io is actively strengthening its executive team as well as its offering portfolio, which is what helped the company stay up to date with the market and maintain a healthy amount of momentum.  Earlier this month CEO David Flynn unveiled a new extension to his company’s storage subsystem OS, that shrinks the normally two-sided write process by 50 percent, boosting performance and lowering costs.

So far, this strategy has been paying off.  The company had a successful IPO earlier this year, and expectations are high as its second earnings call since the IPO is due just over a week from now.  The company is also expected to have a positive longer-term outlook according to Barron’s, which named it the tech stock of 2011.  Barron’s forecasts that the company’s shares may double over the next year to $52, and this alone was enough to give Fusion-io a head start of roughly 20 percent on Monday.  Its shares saw a high of $32.39 and closed at $26.