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Editor:- I first created this page in June 2000 in response to an email from Farid Neema founder of Peripheral Concepts who asked if I could add a listing of storage market analysts. It's used by storage marketers, company founders and analysts themselves. click for more info
storage market research news & reports
STORAGEsearch.com Pageviews Grew 20%

Editor:- May 6, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com today updated its monthly list of the top subjects viewed by storage searchers in April.

The top 5 subjects were:-

(1) - Disk to disk backup - no change
(2) - Solid state disks - no change
(3) - 2.5 inch SSDs - up 2 places
(4) - Hard drives - no change
(5) - NAS - down 2 places

Overall pageviews grew 20% compared to the year ago period.


New 1.0" SSD HDD Directory

Editor:- April 28, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article and directory related to 1.0" (and smaller) SSDs and HDDs.

Once the exclusive preserve of the military, spooks and space scientists this market is now dominated by the needs of shoppers for consumer lifestyle and entertainment gadgets - with market volume projections resembling international phone numbers. ...read the article


Unveiling the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap

Editor:- April 17, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article today called - the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap.

A few weeks ago a reader asked a very good question. "Is there an industry roadmap for future flash SSD performance?"

That prompted other questions like... How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009? or 2012? What are the technology factors which relate to throughput and IOPS? And how much faster will they be than today.

There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay scattered all across this web site and in my many discussions about the market... But I agreed there should be a single place on the web where these answers could be found. Forget Moore's Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article


1.8" Storage Drives - new directory

Editor:- March 10, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new directory of 1.8" Storage Drives.

The battle for supremacy in the 1.8" storage drive form factor, between hard disks and flash SSDs is reminiscent of the 30 year war between Intel and AMD over which processor would be designed into PCs, notebooks and servers. Currently 21 oems actively market 1.8" drives. ...read the article


iSCSI Grew 4x Faster than NAS Market

FRAMINGHAM, Mass - March 6, 2008 - Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew 9.8% year-over-year in Q407 totaling $5.3 billion, according to IDC.

Capacity shipped grew 56.3%. Network disk storage grew 16% but the hot spot was iSCSI with 70% revenue growth.

For the full year, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 22% revenue share, followed by IBM and HP. Dell, Hitachi, and Network Appliance ended the year in a statistical tie to round out the top 5. In this group Network Appliance and Dell posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during 2007, with 19% and 17% growth, respectively. ...IDC profile, Market research

Editor's comments:-
for most of us (whose bonuses aren't linked to these numbers) there's been no significant change in overall revenue growth in this part of the storage market for many quarters. So you might say - what's new?

One thing I'd say - is note the growing gap between the hard disk market which is growing nearly twice as fast as the "external disk systems market". That's due to a black hole in consumer products which is sucking in disks as fast as anyone can make them. And maybe due to lower margins in the enterprise storage market due to competition from what IDC lumps together as "others" - who have been trimming some of the fat off the top 5's oligopoly.

Another thing, which IDC comments on is that the doom and gloom from the worldwide financial markets doesn't seem to have slowed down this market.


iSuppli Says Flash Prices Dropping Below Costs

Editor:- February 20, 2008 - iSuppli Corp. is cutting its outlook for global NAND flash revenue growth in 2008 to the single digit percentage range, down from their previous outlook of a 27% rise.

In an early warning sign of consumer weakness, Apple has slashed its 2008 NAND order forecast significantly and has informed suppliers that its demand growth will slow in 2008 compared to 2007, according to iSuppli sources. This is expected to have a huge impact on the NAND market. With its extremely popular flash-memory based iPods, Apple was the world's 3rd largest OEM buyer of NAND flash memory in 2007.

On the supply side, slower NAND demand will have a major impact on suppliers' financial results. Capital spending on NAND production will rise by more than 20% this year, ensuring easy availability of parts. This will cause prices to decrease. iSuppli believes that NAND prices already are below suppliers' fully loaded costs. ...iSuppli profile

Editor's comments:-
buyers in the fast growing flash SSD market will be the beneficiaries of this downturn. As I predicted last year overcrowding in the notebook SSD market means that prices are already well below previously forecast levels.

Traditionally the big memory chip makers switch fab production between RAM and flash to whichever reaps the highest price. But many analysts already predicted this would not be a good year for RAM oems either.


MCP Flash Report - to be or NOR to be?

Los Gatos, CA - February 8, 2008 - Objective Analysis has completed a new study entitled - Flash Packaging: What Phone Makers Want & Why.

This 32-page report is an in-depth review of the flash MCP market for cell phone handsets and looks into the reasons that OEMs choose the chip configurations they do. One finding - flash multichip packages are predominantly NOR/RAM configurations today and are likely to remain that way for the next few years.

"NAND is making great headway in cell phone handsets through both cards and embedded NAND stacks, but the multichip package is still largely a NOR/RAM product," said Jim Handy, the report's author. "Although NAND flash is finding some acceptance in handset MCPs, cell phone manufacturers find that they have more flexibility by leaving the NAND out of this type of package." ...Objective Analysis profile


the Top 10 SSD OEMs in Q4 2007

Editor:- January 18, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com today published a new edition of - "the Top 10 Solid State Disk OEMs."

Covering the quarter ending December 31, 2007 - there's a new #1, and a newcomer to the list. The article also looks at market milestones and changes since the previous quarters.

If you're choosing SSD suppliers or strategic partners - this is the must-see predictive list of the top companies that matter - based on hundreds of thousands of readers searching for SSD content on the site rated most highly by SSD companies themselves. ...read the article


New Reports Predict Trends in Consumer Storage

San Jose, CA - January 2, 2008 - Coughlin Associates will release 2 new reports at the 2008 Storage Visions conference later this week.

These are reports that no flash memory, optical storage or hard disk drive company should be without. They focus on the needs of consumer electronics - the largest potential market for hard disk drives and the largest current market for optical storage and flash memory.

The Consumer Survey on Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics 2008 is a 93 page, 120 figure document summarizing and analyzes the results from a comprehensive survey of 376 US residents.

The Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics 2008 report is a detailed look at major consumer electronics applications for mass storage. This comprehensive 153-page document, authored by Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates and Jim Handy of Objective Analysis, has 76 figures and 15 tables.

"By 2013 total content in an average US household could total almost 9TB" said Tom Coughlin. ...Coughlin Associates profile


Hybrid Hard Drives Market Report

Los Gatos, CA - December 19, 2007 - The Hybrid Hard Drive will not make a big splash in 2008, according to a new 36-page report by Objective Analysis.

PC users who are waiting for this technology to speed their boot times are going to have to wait a little longer.

"Once all the kinks are ironed out, hybrid drives and their counterparts should sweep the market," said Jim Handy, the report's author. "Unfortunately, the hardware is ready but the software support is weak. Hybrid drives will have to wait for better support to justify their small additional cost."

Hybrid Hard Drives: How, Why, And When? - is an in-depth review of the hybrid hard drive market, exploring the technology, implementation costs, and expected benefits, as it explains why those benefits are not within reach today. The report takes a special look at alternative technologies like SSDs, Intel's Turbo Memory, the SanDisk Vaulter Disk, larger DRAM main memories and DRAM HDD caches, and even small SSDs from Samsung. The report reviews members of the Hybrid Storage Alliance members and details their product offerings.

Readers will learn how hybrid drives work and why they are receiving so much attention today. They will also understand why hybrid drives will threaten the SSD market, and why neither technology is likely to see much acceptance until the second half of 2008 or later. ...Objective Analysis profile


Storage Markets Says Goodbye

Editor:- November 12, 2007 - Storage Markets today concluded its experiment of predicting trends and transitions in the storage industry.

First launched in October 2006, the publication / market research site says that over 560 storage industry professionals and end users participated with insights and opinions.

Here at the mouse site - we have our own way of predicting things - based on analyzing the storage search behaviour of over 1 million readers and feeding that into ScryWare. ...gone away storage companies


Storage PR Agency of the Year 2007

Editor:- October 29, 2007 - STORAGEsearch.com today named A3 Communications - Storage PR Agency of the Year 2007.

The award recognizes the outstanding quality of client-editor interface by A3 Communications in the past year.

"I work with thousands of content contributors" said STORAGEsearch.com's Editor Zsolt Kerekes. "Effective PR Agencies are a helpful tool in getting the right content to my readers. Sometimes I'll miss the significance of a news story when I see it first time round on my screen. Follow up from intelligent agencies which understand the market can sometimes make me reevaluate my snap decisions. PRs who respond quickly to requests for follow up info - help me, their clients and readers. Many other agencies do all those things too - but this year the work of Federica Monsone founder of A3 Communications was outstanding."

In 2005 the award was given to JPR Communications. In 2006 no award was made, because although the overall quality of PRs in the industry had risen, the "best" was too close to call between several agencies.


US & Brits are Worst Backupers - says Survey

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif - October 22, 2007 - A worldwide survey of over 10,000 adult computer users sponsored by Seagate Technology finds that the US population is well behind the rest of the world when it comes to taking the proper steps to back up their digital files.

According to the results of the poll conducted this summer by Harris Interactive, a little over a third of the adults in the US do not take the risk of losing their digital content seriously.

This global poll of consumers also shows that other English-speaking markets are just as far behind the curve as the US when it comes to protecting their digital assets. While US and Great Britain consumers are the most negligent at 35% neglecting to make backup copies of digital content stored on their computer to external devices or media, Australia trails close behind with 30% of the population not backing up.

Of the 6 international markets surveyed, China leads the world in data backup with 83% doing so, followed by France at 81% and Germany rounding out the top 3 with 73% taking the proper steps to ensure they'll have access to their data even in the event of a disc failure or system interruption.

The astonishing discovery is that 31% of those surveyed are still not backing up even though half of them (50%) have experienced the loss of important data in the past. ...Seagate profile


RAM versus Flash SSDs - War for the Datacenter Core

Editor:- August 20, 2007 - STORAGEsearch.com today published a major new article on the SSD market called - "RAM versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?"

We've been writing for years about the subject of hard disks vs flash SSDs. There's a lot of consensus now about which technology will prevail in the disputed application slots for a single drive.

The next multibillion dollar war in the SSD market will be for domination in the high performance rackmount server acceleration space.

Hard disks will retain no finger holds in this war - even if the price of a hard disk drops to zero. Sorry guys. Hanging onto the hard disks in your hot server core will kill your company - because they will make your business applications too slow, too expensive and too unreliable. Outside the core... as bulk content storage or disk to disk backup is another matter, for another article.

The SSD server core war will be internecine - one type of solid state storage versus another. The title of this article " "RAM versus Flash SSDs" is misleading because there are many distinctly different products fighting under each similar looking flag. With specially written features from the world's leading SSD companies - this article will change the way that you think about SSDs in enterprise server applications. 2007 will be seen as the Year of SSD Revolution. ...read the article, ...75 more articles about Solid State Disksm


In-Stat Predicts Low SSD Takeup in PC Market

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz - July 16, 2007 - Although solid state drives will penetrate no more than 6% of the PC market by 2011, they are poised for extraordinary growth in this market from nearly nothing in 2006 to 24 million units in 2011, reports In-Stat.

"There are few compelling reasons for most PC purchasers to pay more money for less storage than they can get using an HDD, so In-Stat expects HDDs and Hybrid Drives to continue to outweigh SSDs in these applications for at least the next several years," says Jim McGregor, In-Stat analyst. "Nevertheless, SSDs' advantages in lower power, higher reliability, lower noise, and faster access than HDDs, in an extremely durable unit, make for rapid growth in some markets, especially in military and industrial Ultra-Mobile Device."

Recent research by In-Stat indicated the higher price of an SSD will limit its acceptance until it approaches parity with HDDs. In-Stat's report "Will Solid-State Drives Revolutionize PCs?" costs $3,495. ...In-Stat profile, Market research, Solid State Disks

Editor's comments:-
In one respect this is compatible with STORAGEsearch's own SSD Market Penetration Model published a few years ago - because we saw no good reasons for the desktop PC market to switch to SSDs. But I disagree with "price parity" with hard disks being necessary before users make the switch to SSDs. That's a narrow simplistic view which has already been invalidated by what users have been doing in many key SSD market segments.
.
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2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
storage market analysts which have been featured in STORAGE News
Aberdeen Group

ABI Research

ACSL - (STORAGEsearch.com)

AMI-Partners

Analysys

BCC

Carmel Group

Clear Thinking Research

Coughlin Associates

Customer Respect Group

Databeans

Dell'Oro Group

DISK/TREND

Downes Strategic Marketing

DRAMeXchange

Enterprise Strategy Group

Evaluator Group

Forrester Research

Frost & Sullivan

Gartner

Harris Interactive

Horison

Hurwitz & Associates

IDC

IDEAS International

Illuminata

IMEX Research

Infiniti Research

Infonetics Research

INPUT

InQuest Market Research

In-Stat

iSuppli

ITSMA

King Research

Macarthur Stroud International

Mesabi Group

Meta Group

Millward Brown IntelliQuest

Multimedia Research Group

NPD Group

Objective Analysis

Osterman Research

Parks Associates

Peripheral Concepts

Peripheral Research

PriMetrica

Probe Group

Research and Markets

Robert Frances Group

RoperASW

Sage Research

Sageza

Semico Research

Silverton Consulting

Simon Management Group

Storage Markets

StorageNewsletter

Strategy Analytics

Strategic Research

Summit Strategies

Synergy Research Group

Taneja Group

Techtel

Techno Systems Research

The451

The Diffusion Group

TheInfoPro

The Linley Group

THINKstrategies

The Yankee Group

TrendFocus

VDC

Web-Feet Research

Westwood Marketing

ZapThink
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Top 20 Storage Searches
The top 20 most popular storage categories on STORAGEsearch.com in April 2008 were as follows... (n) indicates rank the month before.
  1. Disk to disk backup (1)
  2. Solid state disks (2)
  3. 2.5 inch SSDs (5)
  4. Hard drives (4)
  5. NAS (3)
  6. Flash - based SSDs (6)
  7. RAM based SSDs (7)
  8. RAID systems (9)
  9. iSCSI (8)
  10. 3.5 inch SSDs (14)
  11. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) (16)
  12. 1.8 inch drives (new)
  13. Removable Storage (15)
  14. Flash memory (12)
  15. SAN (11)
  16. Serial ATA (SATA) (13)
  17. Market research (10)
  18. Data Recovery (17)
  19. Acquisitions etc (19)
  20. Backup software (18)
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The most popular product ad page viewed on STORAGEsearch.com in April 2008 was this below from Memoright
2.5"   flash SSDs  from Memoright
2.5" 128GB PATA / SATA flash SSDs
100MB/sec sustained read/write
from Memoright
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Top 20 Storage Articles on STORAGEsearch.com?

The top 20 most popular articles on STORAGEsearch.com in April 2008 - were as follows...
  1. the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide
  2. Understanding Flash SSD Performance (pdf)
  3. the Fastest SSDs
  4. the Top 10 SSD OEMs
  5. War of the Disks: Hard Disk Drives vs. Flash SSDs
  6. SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
  7. NAS, DAS or SAN? - Choosing the Technology
  8. Data Backup: Tape vs. Disk
  9. Flash Memory vs. Hard Disks - Which Will Win?
  10. the Benefits of SAS for External Subsystems
  11. RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?
  12. the 10 biggest storage companies in 2008
  13. LVD, SE, HVD, SCSI compatibility
  14. What's a Solid State Disk?
  15. Disk to Disk Backup vs Tape - War or Truce?
  16. Solid State Disks - Market Adoption Model
  17. How Solid is Hard Disk's Future?
  18. SSD Market History
  19. Increasing Flash Solid State Disk Reliability
  20. the Flash SSD Performance Roadmap
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Are MLC SSDs Ever Safe in Enterprise Apps?
This is a follow up article (published in March 2008) to the popular SSD Myths and Legends which, a year earlier demolished the myth that flash memory wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many RAM SSD makers) precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.

This new article looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which have recently hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules in cellphones and morphed into hard disk form factors.
which technology to choose? - read the article It starts down a familiar lane but an unexpected technology twist (which arrived in my email while writing this article) takes you to a startling new world of possibilities. ...read the article
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Squeak! - SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
Does the fatal gene of "write endurance" built into flash solid state disks prevent their deployment in intensive server acceleration applications - such as RAID systems?
It was certainly true as little as a few years ago.

What's the risk with today's devices?

This article looks at the current generation of products and calculates how much (or how little) you should be worried.
read the article - SSD Myths and Legends
RAM based SSDs have been used alongside RAID for years - but flash SSDs are physically smaller and have bigger capacity (upto 160G in 2.5", 512G in 3.5") and are lower cost than RAM-SSDs and could actually be configured in standard RAID boxes. F-SSDs aren't as fast as RAM based products but a single flash SSD can deliver 20,000 IOPs - which when scaled up in an array - starts to look interesting. ...read the article, storage reliability solid state disks
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Squeak! - the Fastest Solid State Disks

Speed isn't everything, and it comes at a price.
But if you do need the speediest SSD then wading through the web sites of over 55 current SSD oems to find a suitable candidate slows you down.

And the SSD search problem will get even worse.
the Fastest Solid State Disks
I predict there will be over 100 SSD oems in 2008.

I've done the research for you to save you time. And this page is updated daily from storage news and direct inputs from oems. ...read the article,
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Squeak! - Why are Most Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks?
read the article - Why are Most Analysts  Wrong About Solid State Disks?
Most analysts and editors of other computer publications don't really understand the solid state disk market. They show their ignorance and naivete by prefacing every discussion of SSDs with a superficial analysis which compares the cost per byte of storage between flash and hard disk drives. That's the wrong answer to the wrong question. And it's far removed from why the SSD market is racing to become a multi billion dollar market seemingly in blithe ignorance of the cost per byte proposition.

This article tells you what's important to users and the main applications in which SSDs are already being used and new applications where they will be used in the next 3 years. ...read the article, Solid State Disks
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the biggest storage companies in 2008?
on STORAGEsearch.com
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downloaded data from his crystal ball
directly into Microsoft Excel."

click to see profile for Napier
Napier is a full service media relations
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that offers a true pan-European approach.

editor proven - PR Agencies
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article:-  Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - by Semico Research
Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - article by Semico Research

There's a confusing picture in many consumer products like phones, cameras and music players in which one day it seems that the storage function is done by flash and next day another company announces they're doing the same thing with miniature hard disks.

Is there any sense to this seemingly random choice?

This article uses pricing trends, technology trends and unique market analysis insights to show that users and oems may be able to reliably predict which storage devices will be most cost effective depending where you are on the future history curve. ...read the article, Hard disk drives, Flash Memory, Market research, Solid state disks
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