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see also
OCZ
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com ,
the OCZ Report
(newsletter) and
OCZ
SSD summary (pdf) - a useful document which provides top level specs and
internal controller details for the full range of OCZ's very large SSD range.
- editor's comments:- January 2012 - OCZ
entered the SSD market in
March 2008 and
has been in StorageSearch's
top 10 SSD companies
list for 5 consecutive quarters.
OCZ has been one of the hardest
companies for me to characterize.
Despite my initial skepticism about
OCZ's stated aspirations to become an "enterprise SSD" company - the
company continued knocking on the door which leads to the datacenter market
with a series of gradually better product announcements - undeterred by my
reactions to its embarrassingly inappropriate initial models.
In
early 2010
I commented negatively about the weakness of OCZ's SSD intellectual
property portfolio - given the size of their revenue and sales growth.
In
the following year OCZ plugged that gap with at least 3 publicly known
acquisitions (detailed further below in history) which strengthened their
patent and design base in SSD controllers, FC SAN enterprise SSDs and PCIe SSDs.
Looking
back with the benefit of hindsight I now realize that's typical of OCZ.
They
don't stand still for long in the fast moving world of SSD. Just when you
think you've got their picture - they move on to the next thing, improve
something which needed fixing or plunge into something completely new.
I think I have a better idea of what OCZ is all about now. Here
goes...
If there is a science to the art of selling and marketing SSDs
- based on the true scientific principle - which is you test an idea - you see
if it works - and if it does you model it and then do some more testing and
gradually get more confident about trying something else - and then learn from
that too - then OCZ is the master of pragmatic SSD marketing.
In the
relatively short span of years in which they've been involved in the SSD market
they've dipped their market thermometers into more SSD niches than any other
company I can think of. And as they've gained confidence from learning what's
hot and what's not they've boldly moved on at a pace of innovation - for example
in the auto-tiering SSD market - which is breathtaking.
Will all their
market experiments work?
It's hard to believe they all will - but
nevertheless the company's reaction times for SSD market experimentation and
the knowledge they are building up across a wide swathe of the market means that
if there is any gold in them there SSD treasure hills they will be among the
first to find it and know how to mine it too. And if there isn't any gold in a
particular SSD hill they're nimble enough to get out lightly before digging
in too deep.
If you want to find products which compete with OCZ - look
in these directories -
notebook SSDs,
2.5" SSDs,
SATA SSDs,
auto-tiering SSDs,
SAS SSDs and
PCIe SSDs. |
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OCZ recent milestones in
SSD market
history
In March 2009 -
OCZ unveiled a
PCIe SSD at
CeBIT. The
Z
Drive uses
MLC flash and has
capacity of 1TB.
But later:- OCZ disclosed that the sustained
write speed is a mere 200MB/s - which is 4x slower than single slot
PCIe SSDs from
Fusion-io and
Texas Memory Systems.
In
April 2009 - OCZ
unveiled new
2.5"
SATA flash SSDs for MacBooks. OCZ also published
a
list of MacBooks which the company says are compatible.
Also in
April 2009
- OCZ
unveiled its
1st miniPCI-Express
compatible SSDs. Aimed at
notebooks OCZ miniPCI-E options include:- 16GB or 32GB capacity, and 2
interface options.
SATA
models - have R/W speeds 110MB/s and 51MB/s respectively .
PATA
models - have R/W speeds 45MB/s and 35MB/s respectively.
In May 2009 -
OCZ
launched its
fastest 2.5"
consumer SATA SSDs -
the
Summit Series - with 200MB/s sustained write and 250GB capacity.
Although
not the fastest SSDs
in the industry, they are more than 2x as fast as OCZ's Core series
launched less than a year before.
In July 2009 -
OCZ was ranked #12 - just
outside the Top 10 SSD
companies - Q2 2009 - in the 9th quaterly edition of this popular feature
based on search volume.
Also in July 2009 -
OCZ
announced
faster versions of its
2.5"
SATA flash SSDs. By increasing the internal cache speed by 8% the Vertex
Turbo now delivers read and write speeds clocking in at up to 270MB/s read and
210MB/s write. These are fast for consumer SSDs - but see the
fastest SSDs list
for much faster devices.
In November 2009 -
OCZ
announced
it will launch a new SAS
SSD family based on SSD
SoCs from SandForce
which will probably be shown at CES in
January 2010.
Also in November 2009 -Symwave
announced that
its USB 3.0 controller
has been designed into a new
flash SSD by
OCZ - which will be shown
at CES in January 2010.
In March 2010 -
OCZ
announced
it's shipping a 32GB 2.5"
MLC
SSD for under $100.
R/W speeds are
unremarkable - at a mere 125MB/s and 70MB/s respectively - but the main point
of this launch - according to OCZ's CEO, Ryan Petersen - was to
publicize the price
point and show what the company is doing "to make SSDs more affordable
to end-users."
Editor's comments:- You get exactly what
you pay for in
SSD pricing. The
big problem is knowing what you want. OCZ's new
Onyx
is a very low capacity, slowish
notebook SSD
which is unsuitable
for server apps. But it does appear to be a good price today according
to
this
comparison. (It may not look so good later.)
Also in March 2010 -
disclosed it
has closed $15
million in funding to support its growing SSD business.
In April
2010 -
OCZ launched the
Z-Drive
R2 - a bootable PCIe
MLC SSD with upto 2TB capacity and upto 950MB/s sustained write throughput.
R/W IOPS are
29,000 and 7,200 respectively - an order of magnitude slower than the fastest
PCIe SSDs today - but nevertheless useful for many applications - unlike the
original Z-Drive (March 2009) which so slow that it couldn't be regarded as a
serious contender.
In June 2010 -
OCZ unveiled the RevoDrive
a bootable
PCIe SSD with R/W
speeds up to 540MB/s and 530MB/s respectively and 75,000
IOPS.
In July 2010 - the architectural weak points of
OCZ's early PCIe SSDs were
criticised in an interview with
Fusion-io's
CEO published on StorageSearch.com.
In August 2010 -
OCZ announced
plans to wind down its commodity
DRAM business and focus
more resources on SSDs
In
October 2010 - OCZ
achieved its best ever listing in the quarterly
top 10 SSD oems list
based on SSD search volume in Q3 2010.
Also -
OCZ
launched a
2nd generation version of its
RevoDrive
- a bootable legacy
architecture
PCIe SSD with R/W
speeds up to 740MB/s and and 120,000
IOPS which
uses 4x SandForce
SF
1200 controllers.
In November 2010 - StorageSearch.com
learned from reliable sources that
OCZ has acquired
intellectual property assets from
Solid Data Systems.
In March
2011 -
OCZ announced it had
signed a definitive agreement to acquire
Indilinx for for
approximately $32 million of OCZ common stock.
In June 2011 -
OCZ was one of several
compatible companies named in
FlashSoft's launch of
its auto tiering SSD
software.
In August 2011 -
OCZ
launched a
hybrid
PCIe SSD - the
RevoDrive Hybrid - which integrates 100GB SSD capacity along with an onboard 1TB
HDD and
SSD ASAP / auto hot spot
cache tuning controller capable of 910MB/s peak throughput and upto random
write 120,000 IOPS (4K) at an MSRP under $500. This was reviewed later (Oct
2011) in an
article
in HotHardware.com .
In September 2011
- OCZ
announced it
is supplying custom 7.5mm high 128GB SATA SSDs which use its Indilinx
Everest SSD controller to LG for use in its in
LGP220
ultra-thin notebooks.
OCZ also launched its
Synapse
Cache Series 2.5" SATA SSDs for Windows 7 environments. The new SSDs
(64GB / 128GB, R/W speeds upto 510/550MB/s, 80,000 IOPS) integrate
NVELO's
Dataplex
cache / SSD ASAP
software to dynamically manage the SSD in conjunction with standard
hard disk drives. When
used to support a pre-existing terabyte hard drive - the overall performance for
popular PC benchmar tasks can be 4x to 6x faster - as the
software learns the where the hot data is for that user's PC - according to
benchmarks and data in
OCZ's
related white paper (pdf)
. No data migration or OS installation is required.
In October
2011 OCZ agreed to
acquire the UK
Design Team (approximately 40 engineers located in Abingdon) and certain
assets from PLX Technology
which will enable OCZ to accelerate the development of its next generation of
fast SSDs - while also reducing development costs.
In November 2011
- OCZ launched 2 new models
in their full height PCIe SSD range - aimed at the Windows consumer market -
the
RevoDrive
3 Max IOPS (120GB to 480GB costs $549-$1,399) and
RevoDrive
3 X2 Max (240GB to 960GB costs $849-$2,499) with 4KB random write
performance of up to 245,000
IOPS, and
R/W rates upto 1,900MB/s and 1,725MBs/ respectively.
OCZ also started sampling
dual port 6Gbps
SAS SSDs in a smaller
form factor - the
Talos
2 SAS SSD provides upto 70,000 4K
IOPS
(75R/25W) and upto 1TB capacity in
2.5" (previously
only available in 3.5"
size).
In December 2011 -
OCZ reported
preliminary
revenue for the past quarter (ended November 30) to be in the range $100
and $105 million - an increase of approximately 90% compared to the
year ago quarter and a 30% increase compared to the immediately preceding
quarter. The company attributed much of this to its growing traction in the
enterprise SSD market.
In January 2012 -
OCZ
announced is
now demonstrating at the Storage
Visions 2012 Conference new
PCIe SSDs - which use
SSD controllers
jointly developed with Marvell
(instead of - as in previous models - controllers from
SandForce).
OCZ also
announced it
has acquired SANRAD for
$15 million. |
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| Who's who in SSD? |
Editor:- November 25, 2011 - (deep breath and
begin)...
OCZ are 1 of many companies in the
notebook SSD
market, 1 of more than 100 companies in the
2.5" SSD market, 1
of more than 40 companies in the
PCIe SSD market, 1 of
30 companies in the SSD
controller and IP market... 1 of (soon to be hundreds) of companies in the
auto-tiering SSD market,
an innovator in the hybrid
SSD market - (but I haven't finished yet - good job I took in that deep
breath at the start) - OCZ also make SSDs with
SAS,
SATA and
USB interfaces... And they
are also in the top 20
SSD companies and fastest
SSDs lists too. (Phew!)
I could have made this list longer.
Or
I could have made it shorter by writing about the complementary market sets.
For example - I could have said - "OCZ doesn't sell
rackmount SSDs,
RAM SSDs
FC SAN SSDs or
hard military SSDs."
But
then I would have had to add an important qualifier at the end. - "Yet".
And then maybe added - "As far as I know."
OCZ
are involved in so many segments of the SSD market it's hard to keep up - even
though the company and its products are very accessible.
Keeping up
with OCZ is like tracking about 20 other SSD companies - if I blink - I find
they're in another market.
Can all these SSD market experiments
succeed?
Probably not.
No single company can be best at
everything. But OCZ do make it easy to buy their products and they have wide
visibility into which SSD segments are hot for business and which are not.
I'd guess they understand the comparative attractions of these SSD market
segments better than most
SSD analysts -
because OCZ is right in there in the shopping cart - so they don't have to wait
to read what's been selling in the past quarter in market research
reports published by the usual
terabyte talliers.
It looks to me that OCZ are spinning the handles in many parallel
SSD market slot machines. If there are going to be any winners - they'll
be among the first to know. And if a segment looks like a loser - OCZ
knows where it can get a better game.
To conclude - I'll use the
summary I wrote recently in my Q3 2011 top SSD companies roundup.
"If
there is a science to the art of selling and pragmatically marketing SSDs -
then OCZ is the master of it..."
I currently talk to
more than 300 makers of SSDs and another 100 or so companies which are
closely enmeshed around the SSD ecosphere - which are all profiled here on
the mouse site.
I learn about new SSD companies every day, including
many in stealth mode. If you're interested in the growing
big picture of
the SSD market canvass - StorageSearch will help you along the way. Many
SSD company CEOs read our site too - and say they value our thought leading SSD
content - even when we say something that's not always comfortable to hear. I
hope you'll find it it useful too. | | |
| ... |
| don't all PCIe SSDs
look pretty much the same? |
When you look at the
photos and headline specs for high speed PCIe SSDs - it's easy to come away with
the impression that they all look the same and have about the same performance.
After
all - how different can they be?
But don't let the experience of the
2.5" SSD market -
in which clusters of consumer SSD vendors use the
same or similar
controllers and hover
close together inpopular
(consumer) performance rankings - give you the wrong idea about
PCIe SSDs.
In
this market the performance limits and capabilities of the SSD aren't set by an
old hard disk interface
and package limitations.
In the PCIe market the products you get are
limited only by the imagination of the designers - tempered by the guesses of
marketers who are trying to predict the optimum (most salable) features for an
ideal SSD. |
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