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| SSD buyers guide |
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| the problem with
write IOPS in FSSDs |
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| PCIe SSDs | .. |
storagesearch.com
published October 2, 2009
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| 11 years - "leading the way to the new storage frontier" |
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storagesearch.compublished October 2, 2009 |
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| 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 (October 2009) there are over 163 active SSD oems - including those who design SSD controller chips. That's 3x as many as 2 years ago). New companies are entering the SSD market every week, and already more than 15 SSD oems (previously listed in our SSD directory) have exited the market.. 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 despite the downturn in other parts of the storage market caused by the recession, there are many segments in the SSD market which appear to be recession-proof. Indeed some classes of SSD products are doing better because of the recession. That's because users don't have the budgets to buy the latest rehash of architecturally bankrupt server solutions touted by traditional suppliers. Instead, users are looking more carefully at ways to make their applications work better at lower cost - even if it means going through a painful learning curve of SSD education and vendor qualification. |
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| Who's going to
dominate this market? It's not that easy to predict. There's already a lot of
traction as you can see by comparing which companies have consistently
remained in the top 10 list in the past 9 quarters. 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. STORAGEsearch.com has an 11 year track record of accurately predicting the top 10 storage oems and major technology shifts within the storage market. | |||||||||
| 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:- financial data and search volume data. (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 2011 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. To be frank - using revenue based reports to guide your way ahead in a fast growing market like SSDs is about as sensible as driving fast down the highway and steering ahead by what you see in the rear view mirror. |
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| (2) - search volume data
- is a near real-time and (nearly) reliable way to see which way things are
heading in changing markets. One simple way to think about it is this. It's the world's biggest focus group of people with a strong interest in SSDs - typically 200,000 to 300,000 unique SSD readers in each past quarter. What they think and do changes the industry. Our methodology excludes measuring direct advertising impressions BTW. So although advertising (or editorial) on this and other sites does create awareness - and that feeds into what readers search for - the top companies in this list may or may not be advertisers. 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 tens of millions of article downloads related to SSD content and our SSD 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. |
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| 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. | |||||||||
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| How to interpret the
rankings? The most important thing is being included in the list rather than the position within it. Having said that there's a 4x difference in pageviews between companies at the top or bottom. I sometimes get emails from SSD product managers griping about the validity of these lists. My reply is that it's a marketing reality they have to live with. Just as being ranked #1 or #90 on Google could make a big difference to your company - our SSD rankings have tracked over 2 million readers since they started. High rankings mean that more people in the market are interested in learning more about what you're saying. On the other hand - if your business plan is to be a leading shaker in the SSD market and your company has never appeared in these lists - then you have an uphill struggle - and success could take a lot longer than you think. You can see below the movements in the top 5 positions in past quarters. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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If you're new to the SSD market
and want to learn how it got here, take a look at these articles.
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| More
SSD related articles:-
SSD Bookmarks the Fastest SSDs the SSD Buyers Guide SSD Jargon Explained After SSDs... What Next? Flash SSDs / RAM SSDs What's a Solid State Disk? the Top 10 SSD Companies Introducing the 1" SSD Market Increasing Flash SSD Reliability Why I Tire of "Tier Zero Storage" Data Recovery from Flash SSDs? How Solid is Hard Disk's Future? Can you trust your flash SSD specs? Is the SSD Market Recession-Proof? 3 Easy Ways to Enter the SSD Market 2009 - Year of SSD Market Confusion 30 Years of SSDs - SSD Market History Overview of the Notebook SSD Market Why Seagate will Fail the SSD Challenge the 10 biggest storage companies in 2012? Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps? SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance" RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best? Flash Memory vs. Hard Disks - Which Will Win? Using SSDs to Boost Legacy RAID Performance 3.5" Terabyte SSDs with Gigabyte / S Performance Hybrid Storage Drives - winners, losers and maybes Flash vs DRAM Price Projections - for SSD Buyers War of the Disks: Hard Disk Drives vs. Flash SSDs SSDs Pushing the Envelope in Blade Server Design How Bad is - Choosing the Wrong SSD Supplier? Z's Laws - Predicting Future Flash SSD Performance Calling for an End to Unrealistic SSD vs HDD IOPS Comparisons the Most Popular Products on StorageSearch.com - (2007 to 2009) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
StorageSearch.com is published by ACSL
