HGST, the enterprise business of disk drive kingpin Western Digital Corp., officially jumped into the burgeoning flash array scene on Monday with the acquisition of a low-key startup dubbed Skyera Inc. that specializes in building ultra-dense storage appliances leveraging solid-state memory. The move marks another milestone in what Wikibon co-founder David Floyer sees as the company’s efforts to move up the industry food chain.

Th transaction, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, is the latest in a string of deals aimed at advancing that goal, a campaign that began with HGST’s purchase of solid-state drive supplier sTec Inc. for $340 million last year. Since then, HGST has added storage optimization capability from VeloBit, Inc. to its arsenal and Virident Systems Inc.’s flash cards, along with the accompanying software.

The acquisitions have provided the building blocks for a homegrown implementation of the “Server SAN” architecture that Wikibon originally defined in August. That blueprint aggregates server-attached storage devices such as those made by Virident into a unified pool. It competes with traditional storage-attached networks, but the technology is still a long way from hitting the enterprise mainstream, leaving a gap that the acquisition could help fill.

Founded in 2010, Skyera has managed to stand out in the highly competitive world of all-flash arrays with a ground-up approach that combines homegrown MLC NAND drives and proprietary management software it calls SeOS (above) to pack an unusually large amount of capacity into a rack. The appliances are also cost-effective, with the startup promising “true price parity” against traditional disk-based systems.

With Skyera under its belt, HGST will now find itself competing against dozens of new players higher up the supply chain, including a healthy of mix of incumbent and emerging vendors. The battle over the hearts and minds of storage admins is only set to intensify next year as EMC prepares to launch all-flash arrays based on the cutting-edge technology it picked up in May.

The deal bears a striking resemblance to HGST’s purchase of Skyera, down to the fact that both vendors invested in their respective acquisition targets before making the buy. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Western Digital subsidiary also has plans for 2015: a successor to its skyHawk series that squeezes 300 terabytes of flash into a 1U chassis.