Introducing the
SSD Bookmarks
Series - Zsolt
Kerekes, editor
(This series ran on the home page of
StorageSearch.com from 2009 till 2011) |
The SSD market has - a long
history
stretching back 35 years - and according to many
SSD analysts - a
bright future too.
It's a complicated and often
confusing
market which offers users and vendors hope and excitement too. Something
refreshingly different in the cynical staid computer market. |
..... |
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Why is the SSD market so
different? |
For users - SSDs offer unique
value
propositions which empower them to do things which were impossible or
uneconomic to do before.
For vendors - SSDs offer
huge new markets
and opportunities to advance computer architecture in a rich variety of
revolutionary ways on a scale not seen since the market debut of the
microprocessor in the early
1970s. | |
| |
Unfortunately the topic of SSDs on the web
is clouded by misunderstanding and misinformation.
Some of this is due
to ignorance by editors who don't understand the subject. Some is due to FUD
pronouncements from vendors. But adding to this swirl of contradictory content
are genuinely held differences of opinion by SSD experts who hold diverging views
about the alternative paths for the future of SSD technology.
In
such cases of contradictory SSD expert opinions (as with the old RISC versus
CISC debates, or Open versus Proprietary operating systems) there are no
absolute rights or wrongs. Those past choices in the IT market involved
different sets of opportunities and risks. Today you have to be aware that
there are indeed choices to be made in SSDs too. There's no monopoly of good
ideas. And sometimes an SSD technology which is right for one application - may
be inadvisable for use in another. |
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As editor of
StorageSearch.com I've been an
evangelist for the SSD market during the past decade.
But frankly
I don't have enough time to read what other
storage publications
are saying about SSDs. That's partly a bad habit - acquired from the time when
there were no other publications covering the whole storage market, and
partly due to time pressure (many good article ideas here never get to see the
light of day), and (here's a confession) because I used to get so irritated
when I saw misleading articles about SSDs in otherwise reputable
publications. That was another reason to stop looking.
But in recent
discussions with SSD vendors and readers it became clear that in addition to a
lot of rubbish and nonsense being published elsewhere on the web about SSDs,
there was also a lot of good stuff too!
Increasing the depth
and quality of education and awareness about SSDs in the general market is
important to everyone in this industry. It's good for users (helps them avoid
making bad mistakes). It's good for vendors (helps them sell more products
faster). And it's good for publishers too.
The SSD market has gotten
too big and complex for it to be comprehensively chronicled in any singe place.
Despite that I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to organizing data
online - and I wanted to do something useful about flagging good SSD signposts
while there was still time to make a difference.
I pondered on how to
pull together a directory of reliable SSD articles in a way that produced better
results than any single editor,
web
2.0 app or search-engine could do. (They all have inbuilt
weaknesses,
agendas or biases when it comes to choosing articles.)
You don't
need to understand semiconductor physics to buy a new processor or a server -
but at this particular generation in the evolution of the SSD market we're
in today - you do have to be aware of a heck of a lot of technology and
architectural concepts if you want to successfully leverage SSD technology in
large scale deployments. Eventually that will change. But it could take another
3 years.
That's when I had a Eureka moment. The answer was simple. I
was already in contact with most vendors in the industry - why couldn't we
collaborate in a way which preserves the unique competitive spirit of each
vendor - but also collectively gives back something new to the SSD community?
So
in April 2009 I contacted SSD visionaries and thought leaders at the pinnacle
of the SSD market and asked for their inputs to this new series.
Although
these people are incredibly busy, they mostly agreed it was a good idea and, as
many of them are readers of StorageSearch.com themselves, they know that our
readers value high quality reliable information about the SSD market.
Over
the next 2 years these suggestions will open up fresh views which cut
across the wormhole fabric in the alternate big bang universe of solid
state storage.
I'm aiming to get SSD Bookmark suggestions from as
many companies as possible. All companies in the SSD industry have been invited
by email and web announcements. Some of the companies which are coming later in
the series are currently in stealth mode and haven't officially announced any
SSD products yet. Others, as you can already see, have been in the market for a
very long time.
I hope that as the content in the series expands
you'll find it interesting and a useful resource which gets you thinking in a
different way about the SSD market.
The format for each set of
bookmarks includes:-
- one article which best describes what the company is doing in the SSD
market - written by or about their own company.
- two or more web links to SSD resources which are not just about the
contributor's own company.
- and in each case - a short note saying why they recommend it to our
readers.
Thanks for reading this. Enough from me. I hope you enjoy the
links.
And if you are one of those people I've been talking to about
your own contributions - just please stop managing your organization for the
next 30 minutes and get on with it. It's not that painful - and our readers
(myself included) are eagerly waiting to hear from you. |
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