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Pliant Technology is developing Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs),
a new class of solid state storage devices that integrate seamlessly into
enterprise information systems and dramatically improve performance,
reliability, energy efficiency, and TCO. Delivering breakthrough improvements
over today's highest performing
hard drive and
SSD storage solutions for a
range of data I/O intensive enterprise applications, Pliant's solution is
expected to be available to OEM and datacenter customers in the fourth quarter
of 2008. The company was founded by a team of successful storage executives and
engineers from Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, and Seagate. Pliant is based in
Milpitas, Calif. More information is available at www.plianttechnology.com.
see also:-
Pliant
Technology - editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com
- editor's comments:- September 2010 -
Pliant is a significant company. Their search volume stats put them in at #13
in
2010 Q2 which is good
in a crowd of nearly 200 SSD
oems and SoC
companies that we track. They were late to enter the SSD market (1st sample
products September
2009) and their initial products are
2.5" and
3.5"
SAS SSDs - initially
SLC (and now
MLC too for better
value in video servers). See more comments about this move below.
14
companies already market SAS SSDs or have said they will do so. So it looks
like a small cozy niche. But if revenue in that segment picks up any one of
more than 100 or so
flash SSD oems
could easily produce a fast SAS SSD within 3 months using a bridge chip and
Sandforce controller
making it look more look like the
SATA SSD market.
Pliant competes head to head for design sockets with the long
established 2.5" SAS SSD leader
STEC. But looking at the
wider picture - Pliant's ideal customers compete with well established
PCIe SSDs (within the
DAS enterprise acceleration market) and
racknmount SSDs
in the SAN and
NAS acceleration markets.
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In March 2009 - Pliant
Technology's VP of Marketing, Greg Goelz shared his
SSD Bookmarks in
the opening episode of StorageSearch.com's new
classic series.
Also
in
March 2009 - Pliant
Technology announced it has received
$15 million in
Series C funding. This will be used as working capital to support volume
production of its SAS
compatible flash SSDs.
In September 2009 -
Pliant Technology
started sampling its
Lightning
family of 2.5"
(150GB) and 3.5"
(300GB) skinny
flash SAS SSDs.
The SLC drives deliver R/W rates upto 525/340MB/s and 160,000 IOPS (for a 90%
R, 10% W mix).
The realistically addressable
market for native SAS SSDs
in disk form factors looks a lot smaller today than 3 years ago when Pliant was
founded. That's because SAS SSD opportunities have been shunted aside by
PCIe SSDs and squeezed
from below by fast SATA
SSDs.
The result has been that SSD vendors have been reluctant to
enter this part of market. But the good news for the handful of companies
actually shipping such products is they don't have to worry about dozens of
competitors going for every design slot. That means higher margins for the
forseeable future.
In March 2010 -
Pliant Technology
published
benchmark results to illustrate the capability of its
3.5" SAS SSDs
when used in arrays. The measurements performed and validated by
OakGate Technology were performed on an
array of 16 SSDs and are summarized in a
video.
In
April 2010 - Pliant
Technology announced
the appointment of Frank Kull as
VP of operations. He brings more than 15 years of experience in operations
management for Google, Cisco Systems and other leading technology companies.
SSD companies
Avere Systems and
Pliant Technology
were 2 of 5 companies named in an 8 page report published by
Gartner -
Cool Vendors in
Storage Technologies, 2010 ($495).
Neither
Pliant nor
STEC found homes in the
SAS SSD sockets of a
new
rackmount system
launched by Nimbus
Data Systems this month. Instead Nimbus designed its own - because it's
easy to do - and
much cheaper.
In August 2010 -
Pliant Technology
announced
the appointment of Mark
Delsman as VP of engineering. Prior to joining Pliant, Delsman was VP
of software engineering for Dot
Hill.
In September 2010 - Pliant Technology
announced it
is sampling MLC
versions of its 2.5" SAS SSD family with upto 400GB capacity and >10K
sustained IOPS.
Editor's
comments:- new dynasty SSD
maker Fusion-io has
successfully demonstrated that there is a healthy market appetite for MLC SSDs
in some "enterprise
apps". How many is "some"? Enough to make a
VC wake up in your
powerpoint presentation!
Most new
2.5" SSD makers
are taking the opposite route to Pliant in that the majority started with
consumer grade (MLC) SSD products with
SATA interfaces and
are busily reworking their products to add
SAS (spelt $A$) so
they can charge higher prices.
Pliant - on the other hand - made a
conservative choice by launching only SLC SSDs when it started sampling its 1st
SSDs 12 months ago. Will Pliant add
SATA SSDs to its line
up too? - Unlikely it could survive in that fiercely competitive market. But
if the company is still around in another 12 months - I wouldn't be surprised
to see them extend their range with a
PCIe SSD. Because you
have to give enterprise customers what they want. Even if the market appears
inconsistent about
what it wants. If the money is there you have to pay attention. | |
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