| Top SSD
Companies - © StorageSearch.com | |
based on
reader search in the 2nd Quarter 2013 (over 184,000 unique SSD
readers) |
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company |
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top related segments |
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notes........................................................... |
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| 1 |
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Fusion-io |
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PCIe SSDs
SSD software
rackmount SSDs |
|
Same as before.
This was
Fusion-io's 18th straight quarter at #1.
The 2 most significant
events for Fusion-io in this quarter were:-
- the departure (in
May 2013) of 2
cofounders David
Flynn (who had been CEO and President) and Rick White (who had
been CMO) due to what may have been differences in long-term versus short term
strategic thinking at a time when the company was indicating that its revenue
had stopped growing.
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|
| 2 |
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Violin Memory |
|
rackmount SSDs
HA SSDs
PCIe SSDs
|
|
Same as before.
Violin didn't
make any significant product announcements in this quarter. |
|
| 3 |
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Stec |
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SAS SSDs
PCIe SSDs
industrial SSDs
military SSDs
rackmount SSDs |
|
Same as before.
In this quarter
- WD announced that
it had agreed to acquire
Stec for approximately
$340 million. On closing - Stec will be absorbed into
HGST.
- Stec announced its entry into the rackmount SSD market with the launch of
an iSCSI COTS array.
Important details were
vague and missing
and I didn't get any replies to my questions about the product.
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|
| 4 |
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Skyera |
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rackmount SSDs
adaptive R/W
technology |
|
Same as before.
In this quarter
- in line with an emerging
marketing trend for such claims - Skyera claimed it was attaining "100x
MLC life amplification" within the 19/20 nm MLC flash used in its storage
arrays. |
|
| 5 |
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LSI |
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SSD controllers
PCIe SSDs
SSD ASAPs |
|
Up 7 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter LSI
announced it had shipped over 40,000
PCIe SSDs in the
preceding 12 months - and had been ranked the #2 merchant supplier of
enterprise PCIe SSDs in the US, and the fastest growing in this categoryin a
report by Forward
Insights |
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| 6 |
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IBM /
TMS |
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rackmount SSDs
HA SSDs |
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Up 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter IBM completed the rebranding of the RamSan product lines it had
acquired from its earlier acquisition of Texas Memory Systems. The rackmount
products were recycled unchanged with new model names (FlashSystem 720 and 820)
but TMS's PCIe SSD products disappeared from the IBM catalog.
IBM
announced it would invest $1 billion in research and development to design,
create and integrate new flash solutions into its portfolio of servers, storage
systems and middleware. |
|
| 7 |
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Virident Systems |
|
PCIe SSDs |
|
Down 1 place since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Virident didn't make any significant product announcements. |
|
| 8 |
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Pure Storage |
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rackmount SSDs
fast-enough rackmount SSDs |
|
Up 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Pure Storage doubled the speed
and density in its flash arrays with the launch of the FA-400 systems which
include upto 24x 512GB
SAS SSDs inside each 2U
storage shelf. The company also announced an investment by
In-Q-Tel (IQT) - a non profit ORG that
identifies innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the US
Intelligence Community. |
|
| 9 |
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WhipTail |
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rackmount SSDs
HA SSDs |
|
Down 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter WhipTail launched new lower cost rackmounts aimed at the
iSCSI SSD market and also
clarified new scalability options for its high end rack users with a new
InfiniBand based
fabric. |
|
| 10 |
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Nimbus |
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rackmount SSDs
HA SSDs |
|
Down 1 place since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Nimbus didn't make any significant product announcements. |
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| 11 |
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OCZ |
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PCIe SSDs
SAS SSDs
consumer SSDs |
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Down 6 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter OCZ announced it can remain listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market
subject to meeting ongoing filing obligations with the SEC by September 16. |
|
| 12 |
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SMART |
|
SAS SSDs |
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Up 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Diablo
Technologies named
SMART Storage as
its exclusive flash partner to pioneer a new type of SSD (faster than
PCIe SSDs) called
memory channel
SSDs.
Just after the quarter ended -
SanDisk announced an
agreement to acquire SMART Storage.
In the 24 hours which followed that
announcement - the search spike for SMART in our readership temporarily shot it
up to the #2 most searched SSD company slot.
But as they say - one
swallow doesn't make a summer - and the quarter remains the most reliable data
capture period for comparing long term trends in this market. Having said that
- see a related footnote at the end of this article. |
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| 13 |
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Micron |
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consumer SSDs
PCIe SSDs
2.5" PCIe SSDs |
|
Down 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Micron
announced
it was sampling a new model in the
hot swappable 2.5"
PCIe SSDs market - the
P420m
has upto 1.4TB MLC capacity and can deliver 750K R IOPS. |
|
| 14 |
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Seagate |
|
PCIe SSDs
hybrid drives |
|
Up 1 place since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Seagate announced new 12Gbps dual port
SAS SSDs - available in
1.8" and
2.5" form factors. |
|
| 15 (tied) |
|
BiTMICRO |
|
SSD controllers
PCIe SSDs
military SSDs |
|
Down 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter BiTMICRO launched a new low power consumption (2W active) 2.5"
industrial temperature operation, rugged, SATA SSD which supports many different
types of military sanitization. |
|
| 15 (tied) |
|
SanDisk |
|
PCIe SSDs
SSD software
SAS SSDs |
|
Up 3 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter SanDisk's CEO said that the company's PCIe SSD revenue had been
negligibly small but they viewed this segment as a significant business
opportunity.
Notwithstanding that weakness as an enterprise SSD
hardware supplier SanDisk revealed
how SSD
software was opening a route into the minds of enterprise users.
As
mentioned earlier in this article - shortly after the close of this quarter -
SanDisk announced it had agreed to buy
SMART. |
|
| 17 |
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RunCore |
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industrial SSDs
PCIe SSDs |
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Up 1 place since the last quarter.
In
this quarter - RunCore announced it had completed the first phase of building
its new headquarters and SSD manufacturing complex in Hunan province, China
which by the end of this year will have the capacity to produce 1 million SSDs /
month. |
|
| 18 (tied) |
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Samsung |
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consumer SSDs
PCIe SSDs |
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Up 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Samsung entered the PCIe SSD market - with models aimed at
notebooks. |
|
| 18 (tied) |
|
EMC |
|
rackmount SSDs
SSD software |
|
Down 1 place since the last quarter.
In
this quarter EMC didn't make any significant SSD announcements. |
|
| 20 |
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Intel |
|
PCIe SSDs
consumer SSDs |
|
Down 4 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Intel - which already uses
LSI's SandForce
controllers in some SSDs - said it will oem LSI's dual-core RAID-on-Chip flash
caching technology. |
|
| 21 |
|
Kaminario |
|
rackmount SSDs
HA SSDs |
|
Down 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Kaminario revealed it had dropped
Fusion-io as its
source of flash SSD modules and turned instead to a design based on
SAS SSDs as the
building blocks in its new arrys. |
|
| 22 |
|
Western Digital |
|
industrial SSDs
SATA SSDs
SAS SSDs |
|
Same as before.
In this quarter
WD announced that it
had agreed to acquire
Stec for approximately
$340 million. Stec will be absorbed into
HGST. |
|
| 23 |
|
Foremay |
|
1.8"
SSDs
2.5" SSDsPCIe SSDs
military SSDs
|
|
Down 2 places since the last quarter.
In
this quarter Foremay didn't make any significant product announcements. |
|
| 24 |
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Greenliant |
|
tiny SSDs
SSD controllers |
|
Same as before.
In this quarter
Greenliant didn't make any significant product announcements. |
|
| 25 |
|
Marvell |
|
SSD controllers
PCIe SSDs |
|
Same as before.
In this quarter
Marvell didn't make any significant product announcements. |
|
Summing up and related articles
One
of the big changes I've seen recently is that SSD vendors have learned that
selling SSDs to the enterprise market only at the
component (drive level)
(instead of in a rackmount
array or with substantial
software) is a risky
business strategy for a number of reasons:-
- they don't learn so much about user needs at the array level,
- they find it harder to perform system wide optimizations
- they have less direct contact with end-users.
And a pressure
point on the enterprise market is that some of the most competive systems at
the rackmount level aren't simply built from arrays of commercial off the
shelf SSDs.
When the
Top SSD Companies series
started 6 years ago
- 8 out of the top 10 SSD companies marketed SSDs in traditional
hard drive form
factors.
In the intervening years we've seen the emergence of many
other important trends - such as the rise of
controllers and new
markets created by PCIe
SSDs.
Now there's another new trend identified in the
latest edition. 8 out of the top 10 companies market rackmount SSDs.
The exciting trends in the SSD rackmount were discussed in a recent home page
blog -
thinking
inside the box.
The other 2 strategic product groups which have
been cited most often in recent activities by the leading SSD companies are
PCIe SSDs (as indeed
they have been for the past 4 years) and also
SAS SSDs - which have
been growing in importance - as SAS is the new SATA in many leading enterprise
arrays.
You can see how these all fit together in -
an introduction to
enterprise SSD market silos.
See also:-
Can you
trust SSD market data?
the Survivor's
Guide to Enterprise SSDs
enterprise SSDs -
exploring the limits of the market in your head
What comes next?
In the 10 days of July 2013 - a
new search spike has (is it temporarily?) shot another company up into the #1
slot - placing it even higher than Fusion-io.
That company is
Google. Google doesn't
sell SSDs - but as well as being one of the world's largest users it does also
make SSDs for its own consumption.
Will that spike in interest
continue?
And what does it tell us about directions in SSD
architecture?
Stay tuned to
SSD news. |
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