the Top SSD
Companies - Q2 201637th
quarterly edition
by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - StorageSearch.com
- July 5, 2016 |
When I started
publishing the
Top SSD Companies in
2007 I
advocated timeliness as being one of the useful attributes of such a list.
I said - "search
volume data - is a near real-time and (nearly) reliable way to see which way
things are heading in changing markets."
In the past 9 years the
Top SSD Companies has proven itself to be a consistently sensitive predictor
of market activity and business trends in all kinds of ways.
Part of
this success has undoubtedly been due to the feedback effect of the list on
the market due the filtering and funnelling aspect of the list itself and
the way it focuses the attention of influential readers whose decisions
impact the market.
The series has also been a useful repository for
comments about changing trends in the SSD market - playing a role between the
relentless daily comments and analysis you'll see in
SSD news and
blogs (here
and elsewehere on the web) the scatter gun noise from
SSD market reports
and other storage related
research (which are now declining), industry trade shows and the annual
updates which pull together a narrative trend from the many threads of change
which have been observed in the market.
One of the shortcomings I've
noticed in my own reporting of the series in recent quarters has been that I've
published the lists later than the ideal deadline- which is within days of the
sample period ending.
My excuse is there always seems to be another
call for my time. All to do with the day to day work of learning about the
market and running and maintaining a web based
publication which
tries to distill the essence of what's important. And another distraction has
been the temptation to write apposite notes about many of the companies
listed.
Those factors while undeniably adding to the quality of the
reader engagement experience in one dimension have also had the negative
impact of detracting from the quality of timeliness. And as a result the "real-time"
impact of the list has weakened.
In this edition I've decided to
publish the list as soon as possible and without many commentaries. If you need
them you can find more information and narrative in the usual places by
following the link trails. |
the Top 25 SSD Companies - Q2 2016based on reader search (over
200,000 unique readers in this period) |
1 - Pure Storage - up
1 place
What can I say?
This is the culmination of many long
term strategic trends - all of which were pointing towards the answer that
until we reach a point of
less
disruptive change and greater stability which is still some years in the
future - that in today's changing enterprise market it is the
rackmount SSD
companies (including cloud)
and systems architecture and
software which are
the only
optimal scale in which to design, integrate, and sell SSD everywhere
solutions as a business brand.
This doesn't mean to say that Pure
Storage will always be that brand. Any more than that in previous periods -
Fusion-io was the
enterprise PCIe SSD market
or that Diablo was the
SSD DIMM wars
market.
In the SSD market it's ideas rather than companies which
stick around.
But Pure Storage encapsulates in one place or brand
today's market reality of a dream which began with other companies in other
places and before Pure itself was even founded - which was one of the
fundamental predictions of the SSD market adoption model due to
user value
analysis. "SSDs will replace HDDs as the working storage in the
enterprise."
I promised you less commentary. But for a new #1
company in this historic series - I couldn't just leave it without saying a few
words.
2 - SanDisk
- down 1 place
See also:-
who's been acquiring
SSD companies since 2000?
3 - Seagate
- up 3 places
See also:-
SSD controllers,
the SSD empowered cloud
4 - Violin
Memory - down 2 places
If you haven't been following this
story closely for the past 9 years - the simple version is this.
Violin
shot to fame in the market at a time when acceleration was the thing.
Shortly after that - when
caching and tiering
software fragmented the SSD acceleration market into many shapes and sizes
Violin failed to stick to any single core market role and instead spent lots
of investor money trying to get into enterprise application segments which
were far too
numerous
for any single company to competently compete in.
See also:-
high availability
enterprise SSDs
5 (tied) - Diablo
Technologies - down 1 place
See also:-
should we set
higher expectations for memory systems?
5 (tied) - Micron
- same as before
See also:-
what's DRAM really?,
nvms for SSDs,
memory
boom-bust
7 - Foremay
- up 2 places
See also:-
SSD security,
military SSDs
8 - Intel
- down 1 place
See also:-
The enterprise
flash story... why is the plot so tangled?
9 - HGST
- up 3 places
See also:-
SAS SSDs,
PCIe SSDs
10 - Kaminario
- up 1 place
See also:-
rackmount SSDs
11 - Samsung
- up 3 places
See also:-
consumer SSDs,
M.2 SSDs
12 - Virtium
- up 9 places
See also:-
industrial SSDs
13 - V&G
also formerly known as RunCore - up 3 places
See also:-
the SSD push-me
pull-yous of customization vs standardization
14 - Tegile
Systems - up 6 places
See also:-
Auto-tuning SSD
Accelerated Pools of storage
15 - EMC
- down 2 places
See also:-
the Fastest SSDs
16 - OCZ
- down 6 places
See also:-
consumer SSDs
17 - NxGn
- up 8 places
See also:-
M.2 SSDs
18 - InnoDisk
- down 1 place
See also:-
industrial SSDs
19 - Marvell
- up 8 places
See also:-
SSD controllers,
SSD glue chips
20 - Toshiba
- down 2 places
See also:-
SAS SSDs,
flash memory
21 - BiTMICRO
- down 6 places
See also:-
rackmount SSDs,
PCIe SSDs
22 - Nimbus
Data Systems - up 1 place
See also:-
rackmount SSDs
23 - Cactus
Technologies - down 1 place
See also:-
industrial SSDs
24 - Microsemi
- down 16 places
See also:-
RAM SSDs,
SSD glue chips
25 - IBM
- up 3 places
See also:-
the fastest SSDs
Who were the SSD companies just outside this list?
The next 10 companies (listed in ranking order) were:-
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related reading
storage market research
companies
is remanence in
persistent memory a new security risk?
where are we
heading with memory intensive systems?
what were
the big SSD memory architecture ideas in 2016? | | |
| . |
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| . |
Creating the climate for
DIMM wars
The DRAM market's new clothes had long been invisible.
But
the SSD market was too preoccupied with lower hanging fruit in storage.
Now
the secret is out and the effect of DIMM wars will brutal and swift and erode
decades of collective wisdom about the shape of next generation memory. |
| latency loving
reasons for fading out DRAM in the virtual memory slider mix | | |
| . |
| It looks like you're seriously interested
in SSDs so if you've got the time - you might also want to take a look at
the home page of StorageSearch.com
which - unlike most home pages - also includes some real content. |
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SSD news
SSD history
VCs in SSDs
market research
the Top SSD Companies -
series overview
about
the publisher - 24 years guiding the enterprise
Branding Strategies in
the SSD Market (case studies)
the enterprise
SSD story why's the plot so complicated?
consolidation
in enterprise flash arrays - why? when? analysis
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my comment about Pure Storage
This
is the culmination of many long term strategic trends...
This
pivotal change in strategic market emphasis was one of the
the
big SSD ideas to assimilate in 2013.
In that article I said among
other things...
"The importance of lessons learned at the
rackmount SSD level - as a business development strategy for SSD drive vendors
cannot be overstated in this phase of the market. Although many of these lessons
can be learned indirectly by other means- the risk of being remote from the user
experience of deploying large SSD arrays - places drive vendors at a
disadvantage where what they do isn't seen to be unique - and their prime route
to market is as a commodity." | | |
.... |
in August 2016
Samsung
claimed the #1 crown in enterprise SSD market share in a press release
which quoted various percentages (32% to 45%) from market research reports
which relate to Q1 2016.
How secure is that #1 ranking? |
| we're #1 in enterprise
SSDs - says Samsung | | |
.... |
The enterprise flash
story...
why is the plot so tangled? |
The enterprise flash story... A lot has been
written about it. But have you ever wondered - why did the plot get so
complicated?
And have you seen some of the recent episodes?
Many of these new characters just aren't believable. But the SSD startup
scriptwriters keep adding new heroes and villains and twists.
Which
got me thinking. Was there ever a best past time to simplify the whole
series?
...read
the article | | |
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| When all storage is made
from memories the dividing line between storage and memory is much more fluid
than it has been before. And the new philosopher's stone by which alchemy
memory chip arrays are repurposed along this spectrum from one to the other -
raising and lowering the data entropy - is software rather than controller
chips. |
| where are we
heading with memory intensive systems? | | |
.... |
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| Symbolic IO exited stealth
mode and unveiled a new family of systems products which are memory intensive,
use aggressive data compacting and are functionally distinct according to
latency, processing and storage roles. |
| SSD news - May 2016 | | |
.... |
| Pure Storage said its AFA
revenue in Q1 2016 was more than the leading HDD array brand |
| SSD news - June 2016 | | |
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