| Editor's
intro:- |
Who are the top 10
most important SSD manufacturers - the companies which you absolutely have to
look at if you've got got any new projects involving SSDs?
A decade ago
there was an easy answer. "All of them!"
It wasn't till 1999
that our online SSD directory
tipped over the 10 companies mark. Today (July 2007) there are over 55 active
listed SSD oems. Another 4 or so I know in stealth mode, another 10 I'm
checking out as imminent maybes and I expect the total number of SSD oems to go
north of 100 in 2008. The new storage gold rush is chasing an opportunity for
storage systems companies that could eventually be worth 5 to 10 billion dollars
a year. And this is a market in which the "usual suspects" EMC, IBM,
HP are nowhere. So in theory anyone could end up dominating this market. |
|
| It's not that
simple. Because there's already a lot of traction. Stakes have been put in the
ground claiming desirable application or technology territories. A handful of
SSD pioneers have already exited the market, gone bust or been
acquired. |
To go back to the question -
which are the most important SSD oems to look at right now? There are 2
empirical ways to form such a list based on different
market research
approaches.
(1) - financial data - looks at revenue and
shipping volumes. The problem with this approach in a market that's growing so
fast - is that revenue data can be 3 to 6 months out of date when collected and
may not sample any data at all from important new companies which
have recently entered the market. This traditional approach will probably work
fine from about the middle of 2009 onwards. And if you can afford to wait that
long before choosing SSD partners / suppliers that's OK. But is it really? I
think waiting that long is very risky. Many companies will be at a severe
competitive disadvantage if their competitors are using SSD technology first.
Faster SSD accelerated ecommerce sites, faster databases and new SSD powered
business applications will mean that waiting too long to hit the SSD trail
could be damaging to your competitiveness. |
|
| (2) - search
volume data - is a near real-time and (nearly) reliable way to see which
way things are heading in changing markets. I've got strong confidence in this
approach having used it as an online publisher for over a decade to help me make
predictions about emerging technologies and disruptions in the storage market.
But search volume based market inferences only work if you have high volumes
of search in the specific subject. That's why you're here... Because when it
comes to SSDs
STORAGEsearch.com has delivered
millions of article views related to hard SSD content and our readership is
growing fast. We've also been discussing the SSD market with nearly every SSD
manufacturer (sometimes before they founded their companies) and with analysts
and interested readers in a wide range of enterprises longer than any other
publisher or analyst. |
The Top 10 SSD OEMs
The
listing below is based on storage search volume - more specifically - pageviews
actually visited of the SSD company profiles on this site. This metric samples
strong follow up interest generated by browsing our SSD directories, following
up news stories or articles and following links from ads. But it excludes the
pageviews of product ads themselves. As we track every manufacturer in the
market and any manufacturer can (and does) send us their content related to SSDs
- this is a measure of how our readers have reacted to that content. |
|
