Apple co-founder, Segway enthusiast and all-around entertaining personality Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak has joined Primary Data, a data center virtualized storage start-up based in Silicon Valley, as chief scientist.

The announcement was made at Demo Fall 2014, as the company emerged from stealth mode.

In his new job, Woz will “counsel Primary Data on technology vision and architecture”. This also means he will leave his position as chief scientist at Fusion-io, the flash memory company which was recently acquired by SanDisk for US$1.1 billion.

"Primary Data uses data virtualization to dynamically place data anywhere as applications demand. I'm excited to share our data virtualization platform with the world," said Woz.

Star signing
Primary Data was founded by some of the people who launched Fusion-io nine years ago, including its charismatic former CEO David Flynn.

Flynn stepped down in 2013 to “pursue entrepreneurial investing activities” – a phrase which seemed cryptic at the time. He was accompanied by fellow co-founders Rick White and Lance Smith – the latter now serving as the CEO of Primary Data.

"With Woz on the team along with Lance and David, we now have the band back together, and I'm amped to be reunited at Primary Data," said White, now CMO at Primary Data.

The start-up is developing a virtualized storage platform for data centers that helps seamlessly move and manage information across DAS, NAS, private and public cloud storage systems. The software features an intelligent policy engine that automatically places data on the right resources – be it file, object or block storage.

Wozniak is a talented engineer, a philanthropist and a geek icon. He singlehandedly designed the Apple I hardware in 1976, and is often credited with helping kickstart the personal computing revolution.

In the years that followed, Woz held a number of positions in research and development, gave hundreds of talks and lectures, wrote several books and even danced tango on national television, in the Dancing with the Stars series..

"Woz has a unique way of seeing the world through the eyes of both an engineer and a visionary, and his energy, curiosity, and excitement about technology is inspiring," said Smith.

"At Fusion-io, he helped us showcase the breakthroughs possible by adding flash in the enterprise, and we're excited to have him on the team at Primary Data as we focus on how data virtualization can deliver intelligent data mobility that evolves with the needs of modern enterprises."