|
|
|
Who's
who in SSD? - by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - November 18, 2011
STEC - is 1 of more than 200 SSD
companies in these SSD market sub-segments:-
fast purge SSDs,
SAS SSDs,
FC SSDs,
SATA SSDs,
3.5" SSDs,
2.5" SSDs,
1.8" SSDs,
RAM SSDs,
PATA SSDs, industrial SSDs,
SCSI SSDs,
SSD ASAPs and
PCIe SSDs.
In a market where reputations for having the
fastest SSDs can be
shattered in days, STEC has established itself a reputation for designing
high reliability
flash drives which stretches all the way back to the
1990s.
Unfortunately the company's enterprise SSDs have also acquired an
image of being expensive relative to competing products from newer
suppliers.
Earlier this year STEC told me it hopes to change all
that with its new generation of SSDs (now being qualified by oems) which
leverage its unique CellCare
technology to extract unusually high endurance and
data integrity
from low cost consumer grade flash.
Will it succeed? - That will
depend on how well the company can sell this new message. Marketing outcomes -
like legal trials - can be fickle and unpredictable because they depend on
how well the arguments have been presented to the customer jury - who may or
may not even understand all the evidence...
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. |
| .... |
 |
earlier editor's comments:- October
2011
STEC is one of the industry's best known, widely respected
and longest established makers of flash SSDs. (See history notes below for more
about STEC's complex SSD roots.)
STEC has appeared regularly in
StorageSearch.com's
fastest SSDs list
and in every one of the past quarterly editions of the
top 10 SSD companies.
Despite its strong SSD heritage, however, the company has in my view
had weaknesses in its business plans and routes to market - which I have
commenetd on in previous years. These are symptomatic of classic "engineering
led" high tech companies -who believe that developing technology and
talking to engineers in a bunch of customer companies is all they need to do
to grow and maintain their business. When competitors come along with products
which are nearly as good, as good, cheaper or even better - these tech-led
companies often wake up too late and realize that they haven't invested enough
in their business channels and brand marketing - and that their previous
leadership position can be blown away in a few quarters. Contrary to their
beliefs (established when their markets were smaller) they don't know who all
their potential customers are - and they can't fix sales blips by arranging
customer meetings for their managers and technical gurus - or presenting a few
more white papers.
STEC offers SSDs in more form factors than any
other company.
STEC has many competitors in the
military,
industrial and
enterprise SSD markets (PCIe
SSDs, SAS SSDs
etc). To achieve its fair share of enterprise SSD market growth - in my view
STEC has to offer credible alternatives (which are fast and competitively
priced) to these companies.
STEC's toughest competitors in the
traditional 2.5" etc enterprise SSD markets are:-
- SanDisk (Lightning
range acquired from Pliant) - if SanDisk can get its marketing act together and
convert from being a consumer company to an enterprise company. Frankly I have
some doubts about that.
- BiTMICRO - whose
new controller architecture looks like the fastest in this segment (if they can
ship it as promised in 2012)
STEC's toughest competitors in the
PCIe SSD market are:-
- Fusion-io - who
dominates the PCIe SSD
market and mostly sells to big server oems. STEC was 4 years late entering the
PCIe SSD market - and has missed out on this important source of enterprise SSD
revenue.
- OCZ - who hinted in
its December 2011 earnings report that it is getting good design wins for its
enterprise PCIe SSDs
STEC also has indirect competitors in the
rackmount SSD market.
That's because if STEC's rackmount SSD customers like EMC lose market
share to companies like Violin
and Texas Memory Systems
- then there's less business to be had for STEC too.
STEC used to be
the company which every other SSD company wanted to beat - owning (as it did for
many years) the
top performance slots
for HDD compatible
server flash SSDs - and a sizable chunk of the
military SSD market
too.
The SSD
market is much bigger now - and the agenda in different market segments is
being set by many different companies - rather than by any single company. If
you try this thought experiment you'll see what I mean. If STEC suddenly
ceased making SSDs - then all its main customers would have little or no
problem adapting their designs to use alternative competing products without
negatively impacting competitive performance. |
|
|
STEC's formative SSD years
Like
many other memory companies in the late1990s STEC's product range included ATA
flash drives - but its earliest standard SSD product was a rugged
SCSI SSD launched in
June 2001.
Thereafter STEC strengthened its SSD technology and
established its core SSD business using acquisitions -
Memtech (a well
established military SSD company - acquired 2005) - and
Gnutek (a startup high
IOPS enterprise SSD maker - acquired 2006).
But STEC's early SSD
history is more complicated than that - because in 1994 it had started an oem
memory products business called SiliconTech which was spun off as a separate
business in 1998 headed by the (then) newly recruited from
SanDisk - Michael
Hajeck who later founded SiliconSystems
(which entered the SSD market in 2004) and was in 2009 acquired by Western
Digital.
more recently
In August 2009 - an article in the Shanghai based 21st
Century Business Herald (Chinese language)
discussed
STEC's share price and competitive environment, quoting many
SSD analysts,
including the editor of StorageSearch.com.
In February 2010 -
STEC reported
that its
revenue
for full-year 2009 grew 55% to $354 million.
In
May 2010 - STEC
confirmed that its revenue for the 1st calendar quarter of 2010 decreased
39% (to $38.8 million) compared to the year ago period. Poor results
had been anticipated and flagged in guidance due to the company's over strong
dependence on a single oem customer -
EMC.
Also in May
2010 an article in
TheRegister.co.uk
suggested that STEC
may soon launch a PCIe
SSD to compete with the likes of Fusion-io and Texas Memory Systems.
That's not a real surprise. The enterprise server acceleration market is STEC's
biggest market. And the PCIe SSD market has - in less than 3 years -
established itself as the most important enterprise SSD form factor - based on
SSD search volume.
In August 2010 -
STEC announced
details
of 2 technologies the company is using to improve
data integrity
and reliability in
its enterprise market MLC flash SSDs. These are called CellCare and S.A.F.E.
In September 2010
STEC announced it is
sampling a new range of fast enterprise optimized
1.8" and
2.5"
SATA SSDs - called
the
MACH16
which is available in SLC and
MLC versions for
commercial and industrial
temperature operation. The SLC models have upto 200GB capacity, R/W speeds of
240Mbytes/sec and 190Mbytes/sec respectively, average latency of 50 microseconds
and 30,000 / 10,000 sustained R/W IOPS.
Also in September 2010 STEC
announced
it is sampling a new 3.5"
dual port SAS
compatible RAM SSD - the
ZeusRAM SSD - with
8GB capacity and under 23 microseconds average latency and internal flash
backup.
RAM SSDs don't have the
"play it
again Sam... as time goes by" syndrome inherent in
flash SSDs -
because they have genuinely low repeat write latency and can be 10x to 20x
faster. In some applications that's a difference
worth paying for.
The
1st 3.5" RAM SSD featured on these pages - was the
MegaRam-35 (in
June 2002) which was a parallel
SCSI SSD from Imperial
Technology. A year later in 2003 -
Curtis marketed a 3.5"
fibre-channel RAM SSD - the
HyperXCLR - which
for many years held the speed records in that form factor. The Curtis unit is
still available as too is a similar product from
Density Dynamics.
In October 2010 - A new edition in our SSD Bookmarks series
was published with suggestions
by Scott Stetzer, VP Marketing STEC.
In March
2011 - STEC was one
of the many companies named as potential enterprise SSD competitors in
Fusion-io's
Form
S-1 registered with the
SEC for a proposed IPO. The document also
includes a scholarly assessment of the state of the enterprise SSD market, key
competitors and risk factors. This makes better reading than many
SSD analyst press
releases and blogs.
In May 2011 - STEC announced it will
transition the hardware used in its high performance
ZeusIOPS (2.5" and
3.5") SSDs from a
dependence on FPGAs to ASICs. And the same ASIC design will be used in
new PCIe SSDs later
this year. STEC also announced that its revenue in the most recent quarter
was back in alignment with the growth rates for the enterprise SSD market -
following a decline in the preceding year attributed to over stocking by its
biggest customer
EMC.
In August
2011 - STEC
announced
it is sampling a new software SSD ASAP product - called EnhanceIO - a
cross-platform cache solution that works with any SSD to accelerate enterprise
applications, however, it is optimized for STEC SSD devices. STEC has also
started sampling its previously unveiled PCIe SSD family.
In November
2011 - STEC
started sampling a new
high endurance
MLC SSD - based on its proprietary
CellCare technology
- the new ZeusIOPS
XE (Extreme Endurance) is a 6Gbps SAS SSD family, available in
1.8",
2.5" and
3.5" sizes (300GB
or 600GB) and supports at least 30 full capacity writes per day, every day,
for 5 years. Latency is 50 microseconds max. Sustained R/W throughput is upto
500MB/s and 275MB/s respectively and random IOPS is upto 38,000 8K (70R/30W).
|
 |
| SSD sudden power
loss vulnerability guide |
Why should you care
what happens in an SSD when the power goes down?
This important design
feature - which barely rates a mention in most SSD datasheets and press releases
- has a strong impact on
SSD data integrity
and operational
reliability.
This article will help you understand why some
SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in
others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be
negligible. |
|
| | | |
|
|
| .... |
| "Bottlenecks in the
pure SSD datacenter will be much more serious than in the HDD world." |
| ...StorageSearch.com blog - January
2012 | | |
| .... |
| STEC
prospecting for more enterprise SSD business |
Editor:- January 17, 2012 - STEC announced that
industry veteran Vaughn Miller has joined the company's Systems and
Software Group as VP of Business Development.
Mr. Miller is
responsible for developing business opportunities with OEMs and ISVs that
focus on enterprise
applications.
During the past 16 years, Mr. Miller held various key
management positions in business development for
Cisco Systems,
NeoPath Networks,
Acopia
Networks (acquired by F5 Networks, Inc.),
NetApp and
Auspex Systems. Prior to
his roles in business development, Mr. Miller served as an engineer for
Landmark
Graphics (a Halliburton company) and
Modcomp.
Editor's
comments:- if you're unfamiliar with the earlier companies in this virtual
cv - before we get to the storage companies - the themes are "real-time"
and "big data analysis", the world's first
NAS company (Auspex) and "virtualization".
I've said for years that STEC didn't put enough effort into
enterprise business development. The company lost market share in the
enterprise SSD market in
2011.
Better late than never to grab a map and shovel in
this year of the
Enterprise SSD Goldrush. | | |
| .... |
|
|
| .... |
| STEC still
fails to benefit from growing SSD market |
Editor:- November 9, 2011 - As
expected - STEC's
revenue slope is still pointing in the wrong direction.
The company
reported
revenue for the 3rd quarter of 2011 was $72.5 million, a decrease of 15%
from the year ago quarter.
Editor's comments:- it will be
several more quarters before it becomes clear whether STEC's currently
qualifying products will be market hits or not. That's why I wrote in August -
"STEC is now cheap to buy - but would be very expensive to own..."
As previously discussed the company's marketing response to changes in the
enterprise SSD market in recent years has been inadequate in 3 main areas.
- STEC needed to develop more diverse routes to market.
The
growing size of the market and customer opportunities couldn't be matched with
its outdated oem business model. More enterprise sales channels would do more
than grow STEC's revenue. They would grow its market intelligence too.
For example because there were no STEC branded
rackmount SSDs
the company was several steps removed from learning what enterprise SSD end
users really wanted.
- STEC was naive in thinking that FUD factors related to quality
problems with some wannabe SSD competitors a few years ago (such as
Intel) would provide more
than a temporary respite from competitive pressure coming from
SandForce and
Pliant. STEC's
potential market weeded out which suppliers it could trust and has accepted
competing SSD technologies in the high IOPS space.
- STEC completely failed to react adequately (for years) to the
seismic market shift in the enterprise market opened up by
PCIe SSDs - led by
Fusion-io.
There's
a funny scene in the movie - The
Dish - when the Australian relay station has lost contact with Apollo 11
and the scientists debate the science behind exactly where to point the
microwave dish based on its last known position, spin of the Earth etc.
Someone looks out the window, sees the moon and says - point it there! |
| In the SSD market context "there"
is "here" => |
 | |
| If STEC can come up with a good story that
satisfies the editor and readers of StorageSearch.com they have a credible
place in the SSD business map of the future then STEC's revenue slope might
spin around to align in a more positive direction. | | |
| .... |
| 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. |
|
| | |
| . |
| SSD uncertainty -
what's the best eMLC? |
Editor:- July 25, 2011 - STEC is lifting the
veil off how it manages MLC flash inside its enterprise and industrial SSDs -
as part of a new positioning gambit that warns customers - not all so called
enterprise MLC SSDs are created equal.
You're thinking -
isn't it all MLC management in enterprise SSDs pretty much the same? - Just a
variation on what
SandForce and
Fusion-io already do?
(Only STEC is more expensive than SF, and not as fast as FIO...)
That's
what I thought too - but I was wrong.
This will be the start of new
enterprise MLC branding
wars in which SSD designers and memory makers battle it out to try and
convince you... |
 |
... that their own (very
different) ways of doing enterprise MLC SSDs - as they head towards 1X
nanometer flash - is better than all the others.
...read the article | | | |
| ... |
| is STEC
better placed for 1X nm nand SSDs than those relying on eMLC? |
Editor:- July 20, 2011 - STEC held a conference
call earlier this week hosted by financial analyst Stifel Nicolaus. Here are some
higlights:-
- shrinks from 34nm to 1X nm - STEC will get early models and
samples of 1X nm nand flash at the the end of this year.
- ECC - STEC says traditional
BCH error codes aren't
viable for future MLC flash generations because they would need 100 / 300 bit
codes for consumer / server apps. In the server case - the error codes could use
up 30-40% of the original capacity
- eMLC vs STEC MLC. STEC said it has 2 dozen pending patents on its
MLC protection technology (called Cellcare) - which works with consumer MLC.
STEC says its MLC technology provides better operating life and more even
performance in SSDs than higher priced enterprise MLC. STEC says that the
tweaks and selections done by flash memory makers to produce eMLC won't scale to
future generations.
STEC also said that eMLC doesn't guarantee an operating
life which is as long as its Cellcare - and some SSD makers may find they
don't have a long term future in the market - due to a combination of
wear-out /
performance degradation that will affect customers - and due to the fact that
eMLC isn't scalable. |
|
| | |
| . |
|
| . |
|
| |
