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the Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2009 Q2 - 9th in this seriesclick here for the most recent version of the Top SSD companies listSSD news SSD market history flash wars in the enterprise SSD market are you ready to rethink enterprise DRAM? Power, Speed and Strength Metaphors in SSD brands |
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| the Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2009
Q2 by Zsolt Kerekes, editor - StorageSearch.com 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 2009) there are over 155 active SSD oems - including those who design SSD controller chips. That's 2x as many as 12 months 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 a 10 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. | |||||||||||||
| (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. | |||||||||||||
| The Top 10 SSD OEMs The listing below is based on storage search volume 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 the remembered stimulus and brand impression of ads. |
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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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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StorageSearch.com is published by ACSL
