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Toshiba will design new
SSDs using DensBits' adaptive flash controller IP
Editor:- October
21, 2013 - DensBits
today
announced that
it has licensed its advanced Memory Modem technology (a variety of
adaptive R/W
and DSP flash controller IP) to Toshiba for use in new
designs of SSDs.
the
SSD IPO saga turns to Nimble
Editor:- October 18, 2013 - Nimble Storage has
filed its
FORM
S-1 documents for an IPO from which we learn the following things.
- Nimble has 1,750 end-customers
- Nimble had $50 million revenue in the 6 months ending July 31 - at which
time it also had 464 employees
Editor's comments:- unlike
Violin which IPOed
recently, Nimble's rackmount systems are primarily
caching hybrid arrays.
Although this is another very crowded market segment within the
enterprise SSD product
continuum - Nimble has a clear postioning message which is...
"Our
mission is to provide our customers with the industry's most efficient storage
platform."
I like that wording - because exactly a year ago in
my home page blog here on StorageSearch.com - my theme was
Efficiency as
internecine SSD competitive advantage.
PS - If you're researching
Nimble (Storage) then please be careful not to get them mixed up with Nimbus
(Data).
Nimbus's CEO told me recently he'd prefer it if I always
expanded "Nimbus" to "Nimbus Data" - so that people don't
get Nimbus confused with Nimble.
This malapropism isn't something
which I had considered before.
I replied that in the unlikely event
that serious customers (as opposed to casual readers) ever did get confused -
the solution would be for one of the companies involved to change their name.
See also:-
SSD branding
strategies
Virident acquisition completed
Editor:- October 17,
2013 - Western Digital
announced
it has completed the acquisition of Virident Systems -
which will be integrated along with other recent enterprise SSD acquisitions
into HGST.
Editor's
comments:- this has already been much analyzed before so I won't go over
that old ground here. But one question which it's interesting to think about
with respect to future acquisitions is how far up the
SSD software stack can
enterprise component
companies like WD credibly aspire to go - before they risk either losing the
plot or losing oem customers?
It's different in cases where the
wouldbe acquirer already is a systems company - and where the primary driver
behind the acquisition - may in fact be to get the SSD software - as was
undoubtedly the case with Cisco
and Whiptail.
But
the daunting challenges of managing software lifecycles may set a ceiling or
boundary to the nature of some of these activities for other companies. The
exception is SSD software which already fits into a recognized product category
- such as caching.
How
do I reconcile that idea with another of WD's recent acquisitions -
Stec - which had
launched its own rackmount SSD in the days leading upto that acquisition
announcement?
In my view Stec's iSCSI box wasn't a real product
which had any lasting value. Anyone can stick some drives into a box. (As
EMC discovered when they
did that themselves back in
January 2008
as a quick and dirty way of entering the SSD market.) No one is very impressed
- or fooled - when they see vendors do that. (Unless they're not in the
market - in which it doesn't matter what they think.) And the
rackmount SSD market
today is very much more sophisticated and demanding today compared to 5-6
years ago.
If SSD systems vendors don't know at the outset what
they're aiming to be best at - they shouldn't even reach for the screwdrivers.
See
also:- SSD
acquisitions since 2000,
PCIe SSDs
OCZ
back to NASDAQ compliance
Editor:- October 16, 2013 - OCZ today
announced
it has received notice from NASDAQ
saying that the company is now current in its SEC
filing obligations.
New report from the Spur Group tracks "share of voice"
in rackmount SSD market
Editor:- October 16, 2013 - The Spur Group
recently
launched
a new market report service -
Share of Partner
Voice: Storage and SSD ($4,995) which compare the sales channels for 4
encumbant rackmount storage platform vendors:
EMC,
NetApp,
Oracle and
Dell against the channel
efforts of selected rackmount
SSD suppliers including:-
Fusion-io
X-IO,
Violin Memory,
Skyera,
Whiptail and others.
The
Spur Group says its "Share of Partner Voice" web based methodology
is rooted in "extracting website content from over 76,000 technology
service providers, hosting companies, software developers and other customer
facing technology suppliers through a proprietary crawler."
Ross Brown, senior principal
and the lead author of the report, said - "Our approach to measuring Share
of Partner Voice® shows that Violin Memory is outpacing the market, with
more than twice the brand presence of its nearest competitor. The report also
highlights why the market for
acquiring these
companies is accelerating, as the channel adoption is happening very quickly and
often at the expense of incumbent platforms."
Editor's
comments:- As you know I'm a great believer in the value of using raw web
data to get insights into fast changing emerging markets - which is why I
launched the Top SSD
Companies series - 6½ years ago.
The raw data types and
methodologies which The
Spur Group use are completely different to ours. They look at different
types of web activity and are based on different population samples - so the
results and inferences are going to have different use cases too.
The
growing ecosystem for storage
and SSD market data companies is a healthy sign that more economic
activity in future will become SSD-centric.
But a bigger SSD market
means bigger risks too.
This is a complex and innovative market - so
it's very easy to miss key products, companies and trends in the SSD market
compared to the comparative ease with which you can assess what's happening in
the "no great surprises here" technology museum segments
elsewhere in the enterprise.
the Top SSD Companies in Q3 2013
Editor:- October 15,
2013 - the
new edition of the Top
SSD Companies - the 26th in this series - based on metrics in the 3rd
quarter of 2013 - was published today on StorageSearch.com.
3 companies entered these lists for the first time:- HGST, Diablo Technologies and
Tegile Systems.
...read the article
OCZ 's delicate balancing act with good and naughty SSD market
revenue
Editor:- October 15, 2013 - OCZ reported
results
for the quarter ended on August 31. Revenue was $33.5 million compared to
$55 million in the preceding quarter and had declined 62% compared to
the year ago period.
Ralph Schmitt,
CEO of OCZ said - "This has been a difficult quarter as demand for our
products continues to be greater than our ability to supply, given our capital
constraints."
Editor's comments:- this situation has been
well analyzed by the financial
press - so I won't repeat what they say here. But for the non financial
techies out there - here's my summary...
Just as you know there's
good flash and
naughty flash - so too in the SSD market of recent times you could say
that there has been 2 types of SSD revenue too:-
- good SSD revenue (the enterprise kind) and
- naughty SSD revenue (the consumer kind).
Most companies - if they
have the choice - are trying to shift the balance of their SSD revenues over to
the good kind - where they lose less money.
In this difficult
rebalancing act - OCZ had got to the point in the prior quarter where the good
revenue (enterprise) was 60%. Now it's dipped back down to 50%.
Cherry
picking products aside - ideally OCZ would find a way to extricate itself
cleanly from the consumer
SSD market - and focus entirely on the enterprise markets. And this is a
topic which has fed the rumor mill again recently. | |
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