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Editor:- the next edition of the Top SSD Companies List - based on metrics in Q1 2014 (and the 28th quarterly edition in this series) - will be published here April 30th
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the Top SSD Companies

new edition! - series overview and links to all past quarterly editions

by Zsolt Kerekes, editor, StorageSearch.com - January 31, 2014

Who are the top SSD companies?... the companies which you absolutely have to look at if you've got any new projects involving SSDs?

There are over 500 companies actively designing and marketing SSD products and systems today.

About 7 years ago I started publishing a new series - the Top SSD Companies which has been seen by over 5 million readers and is now regarded by many key people in the SSD industry (and their investors and biggest customers) as one of the most useful SSD articles which influences their thinking.

In the very 1st edition (July 2007) I explained why I believed search volume based data would be the best way to shortlist the future winners in the SSD market. I said...
  • The SSD market was going to grow from a small base of easy to follow companies into many hundreds of companies that few people - apart from market specialists - would have the time to analyze and follow.

    SSDs would change from being a niche topic to become the most significant business leveraging assets in the enterprise IT infrastructure - therefore it would be useful to identify future leaders as early as possible.
  • Financial data was backwards looking, was available too late to provide visibility in fast growing discontinuous markets, and was not available for the significant companies in the market - which at that time were still mostly privately owned.
  • Market research data was also backwards looking. At that time the SSD market was too small to merit the attention of many dedicated SSD analysts. Also traditional market research techniques would entirely miss the early adoption signals from disruptive startups who wouldn't be on the radar of storage market research companies at all.
  • Who really decides the future winners in the SSD market?

    It's the early adopters and the movers and shakers who make markets happen.

    In the years leading up to the start of this new series - that had always been exclusively (at first) and then heavily represented by the readers of StorageSearch.com.

    And although there are now thousands of web sites which cover the SSD market - our readership still includes most of the significant people who will decide the shape of the future SSD market including the people who start and manage the most significant SSD companies and their biggest and most trend setting customers.
Many of these arguments are just as valid today. And as the SSD market has grown bigger and the predictive power of the series has been market proven - each new edition of the Top SSD Companies is eagerly anticipated.

I'm a heavy user of the list myself - because it reminds me what you think is important. And the real-time raw version is sensitive enough to tell me about emails and news stories I should have looked at but didn't.
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Year the Top SSD Companies
links to earlier editions		 Key changes in each edition
2013 Top 25 SSD Companies - 2013 Q4 In this edition (published January 31, 2014) the shape of the bulge at the very top of the list changed.

Also - Virtium - made its first appearance in this list.
Top 25 SSD Companies - 2013 Q3 HGST and Diablo Technologies made their first appearances in this list.
Top 25 SSD Companies - 2013 Q2 8 of the top 10 companies now market rackmount SSDs.
Top 25 SSD Companies - 2013 Q1 Greenliant Systems and Marvell Technology made their first appearances in this list.

This edition also looked back on the track record of the series and noteworthy early predictions of future market leaders.
2012 Top 25 SSD Companies - 2012 Q4 Pure Storage made its first appearance in this list - having been a near miss in the previous quarter.
Top 25 SSD Companies - 2012 Q3 Fastest climber was Skyera - up 14 places.

KingSpec made its first appearance in this list.
Top 25 SSD Companies - 2012 Q2 2 companies went straight from exiting stealth mode into the list:- DensBits and Skyera.

Also 2 longer established companies - Kaminario and KingFast - made their first appearances in this list.

The market impact of adaptive R/W DSP IP was examined in this quarter's article for many of the leading companies.
Top 20 SSD OEMs - 2012 Q1 Anobit (acquired by Apple) made its first appearance in the top 20 list.
2011 Top 20 SSD OEMs - 2011 Q4 WhipTail made its first appearance in the top 20 list.
Top 20 SSD OEMs - 2011 Q3 FlashSoft and Nimbus made their first appearances in the top 20 list.

IO Turbine would have done so too - if it hadn't been acquired during the qualifying quarter by Fusion-io.
Top 20 SSD OEMs - 2011 Q2 Pliant made its first appearance at the top 10 end of the list - in the same quarter in which it got acquired by SanDisk.

Virident Systems also entered the list for the first time.
Top 20 SSD OEMs - 2011 Q1 Kove entered the list for the first time.
2010 Top 20 SSD OEMs - 2010 Q4 SMART and LSI entered the list for the first time.
Top 20 SSD OEMs - 2010 Q3 As the list was expanded to 20 SSD companies - readers got better visibility of the changing rankings for companies like Pliant and Seagate.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2010 Q2 OCZ entered the list for the first time.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2010 Q1 Micron and PhotoFast entered the list for the first time.
2009 Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2009 Q4 Fusion-io unveiled details of a very fast PCIe form factor, InfiniBand SSD for "government customers" and revealed that Samsung had become an investor.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2009 Q3 StorageSearch.com disclosed that more PCIe SSDs had passed 2.5" SSDs in reader search popularity.

"This is a tsunami warning event for SSD vendors in the enterprise server acceleration market" said editor Zsolt Kerekes in a news alert September 24, 2009.

Foremay entered the list for the first time.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2009 Q2 SandForce entered the list for the first time. First appearance of a company whose primary business was designing SSD controllers.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2009 Q1 Fusion-io was #1 - announced deal with HP and coming on-board of - Steve Wozniak. PureSilicon entered the list for the first time on news it was sampling the world's first standard height terabyte 2.5" SSD.

RunCore entered the list for the first time.
2008 Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2008 Q4 Intel entered the list for the first time.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2008 Q3 Fusion-io entered the list for the first time.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2008 Q2 Memoright was #1 having shipped the fastest 2.5" SATA flash SSD family available during most of this quarter.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2008 Q1 STEC said it would be supplying its SSDs on an "exclusive" basis for use in EMC's Symmetrix DMX-4 following a disasterous revenue quarter.

Toshiba entered the list for the first time.
2007 Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2007 Q4 BiTMICRO was #1. Memoright entered the list for the first time.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2007 Q3 SanDisk was #1. Violin Memory entered the list for the first time.
Top 10 SSD OEMs - 2007 Q2

start of a new series 		STEC was #1.

8 out of the top 10 made HDD form factor SSDs.

SiliconSystems received a patent for its PowerArmor technology.

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Being late to market doesn't count as a mortal sin in the SSD marketing lexicon right now because first mover advantage assumptions aren't valid in this phase of the market's development.

Let's remember - that 4 years ago, in January 2010 - LSI was "the 163rd company to enter the SSD market".

And look where they are now.
who's who in SSD? - VMware (March 6, 2014)


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ioDrives from Fusion-io


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Pure Storage's rackmount SSD shipment mille-stone
Editor:- March 11, 2014 - Pure Storage today announced it has shipped over 1,000 of its Pure FlashArrays (fast enough rackmount SSDs).

Editor's comments:- in case you didn't get that "mille-stone" thing. "Mille" is an olde English prefix (from latin) meaning "thousand".

In enterprise flash array history context:- Pure Storage's shipments milestone is less signficant than IBM's 1,500 FlashSystem 840s (fast rackmount SSDs), but more significant than Tegile's 1,000 Zebi storage arrays (hybrids) - which we have also heard about in this quarter.


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HA integrated PCIe SSD based acceleration
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the ZD-XL SQL Accelerator
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enterprise SSDs - exploring the limits of the market in your head - is about enterprise SSD futurology.

adaptive flash care management IP (including DSP) for SSDs - what is it? and who does it? This will be a disruptive transition.

The big market impact of SSD dark matter - you can't see them and they aren't in the market size reports which you just purchased recently. But you can't plan SSD investments or strategies without taking them into account.

Can you tell me the best way to SSD Street? - I'm like the Old Woman of the SSD Village who talks to everyone that passes through. No wonder I have a unique perspective. It would be strange if I didn't.

scary Skyera - Skyera's CEO sounded out on the problems of being a newbie in the enterprise systems market - and the awesome consequences which can follow from improving SSD utilization ratios.


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F3 Plus SLC SSD - enterprise SSD with SLC
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"SSD efficiency is a very powerful differentiator in technology and I think it will also be very important in influencing business success too."
Efficiency - making the same SSD - with less flash