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STORAGEsearch.com is
recognised by most SSD
manufacturers as a leading authority on recent developments and changes in
the emerging SSD market. This article updates our earlier SSD market penetration
model, first published in 2003. It also predicts and describes the emergence
of some new applications and markets.
I first started using SSDs in
computer systems over 25 years ago, and have tracked the market as a publisher
for over a
decade. The STORAGEsearch model and insights presented here are based on our
own original market research, discussions with SSD oems, analysis of reader
trends, discussions with readers and reading (or publishing) much of the
original literature related to this market in the last 5 years.
Before
presenting our market model - let's go back to the premise in this article's
title above - "Why are Most Analysts are Wrong About Solid State Disks?"
One
simple answer is that analysts and market researchers have nearly always
failed to anticipate, recognise or predict the emergence of new disruptive
technology markets. This phenomenom is well documented in marketing text books.
The
SSD market is no different in that respect to any other disruptive market.
Analysts tend to be good at predicting incremental changes in established
markets where there already is plenty of data about revenue, users and product
shipments. It's expensive to collect that data, and someone has to pay for it.
In the high-tech market when product niches are below about $500 million (using
2005 values) - it is not economic for traditional big name market researchers
to collect any data. In the absence of sponsors and market research which asks
users why they are buying new technologies - market research companies fall
back on using traditional analysis techniques - usually applied to the wrong
parameters.
In the SSD market - the wrong parameter to look at is - the
price per byte of solid state disk storage (flash or RAM
price) and compare that to the price of rotating magnetic media in hard disk
drives. After quoting publicly available price points - the
sages wisely pronounce
that the projected graphs may cross and reach parity at some distant time in the
remote future but the time has not yet come - and they can't see what all the
fuss is about.
Before progressing to our own market penetration model -
I thought it would be instructive and amusing to see how that kind of
traditional analysis - which looks at the wrong data from the wrong point of
view - would have predicted the outcome of some earlier disruptive
technologies:-
- the car:- was a disruptive technology in the 20th century which
mostly replaced walking, the horse and the train as a method of transport. Yet
if you look at the cost to buy, or the cost to own, or the cost per mile - then
the roads today should be filled with motor bikes and not cars. Cars cost more.
Are we all nuts?
The customer value proposition is that cars offer
greater flexibility and comfort in personal transport. Even though cars are
mostly used by a single driver, they offer the flexibility of being able to
carry more passengers. And even though motor bikes offer lower cost when
carrying 2 adults (and 2 bikes carrying 4 passengers costs less than a car
too) most users still prefer to buy cars for everyday transport. (Bikes and
their leathers, in the US and western Europe have become a fashion / lifestyle
statement - but that's outside the scope of this discussion.)
- the original IBM PC:- the killer app for the early PC market was
word processing. But in the early 1980s a PC with printer cost about 20 times as
much as a portable typewriter and about 4 times as much as a heavy duty electric
typewriter. PCs were also more complicated to operate. Looked at on a pure cost
to buy basis - the PC market should never have taken off in the document market.
However, as we all know - typewriters became extinct. Who could have predicted
that?
The customer value proposition was that users could standardise
documents and the flexibility of PCs was judged superior to that of typewriters.
Although in a rear guard action - office based typewriters did start to sprout
floppy drives and editing screens - the PC is the tool which won.
- the Apple iPod:- why would any sane person in 2004/5 buy an iPod to
play music - when a portable CD player or cassette tape player costs less than
1/4 of the price - and doesn't need a PC to set it up?
As we know,
tens of millions of users have bought iPods and the market for similar
technology portable music players will soon pass the hundreds of millions mark.
So the cost per player is not the important issue in the minds of the user.
The
customer value proposition of the iPod is that it delivers a more flexible and
rewarding entertainment experience compared to listening to the same small
number of CDs (or tapes) over and over again until you are bored, or the
cumbersome alternative of carting around a crate of music media. Let's
move on to the SSD market and see why cost per byte analysis has failed to
predict or explain the emergence of a multibillion dollar SSD market. |
| STORAGEsearch.com SSD Market Penetration Model (Nov 2005) |
| Type |
Application |
Narrative |
| 1 |
Hostile
Environments |
This was the earliest use of
SSDs.
In the late 1970s manufacturers of industrial control systems
used solid state disks to hold programs - because the hard disks available at
that time were expensive and unable to operate reliably in a factory environment
(vibration, temperature and power fluctations being the main stress points).
For similar reasons SSDs were used in military embedded systems. Competing
with SSDs specialist military manufacturers designed cannisters which reduced
the amount of vibration transmitted to hard disks, enabling their deployment in
some vehicle and mobile applications, and the durability of HDDs improved during
the 1990s. But there are many environments where HDD media itself cannot survive
- such as extremes of high and low temperature. By the end of the 1990s flash
solid state disks had started to replace HDDs in most miltary applications due
to superior operating temperature, lower weight, lower power and faster
performance.
Today one of the iconic applications for mobile consumer
storage is portable music players such as Apple's iPod - in which HDD or flash
SSDs are used depending on the price point. But much higher volume markets where
SSDs will dominate, and where mobility and environmental factors are important
include:- cell phones, in car entertainment and navigation systems and cameras.
The
customer value proposition in Hostile Environments is that SSDs operate in
environments in which hard disks are unsuitable, and where SSDs have superior
weight, power, reliability or other key attributes.
An excellent
discussion of how the "floor price model" affects the interplay of HDD
and flash in consumer applications is presented in this
article:- Flash Memory
vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? written by Jim Handy
Semico Research |
| 2 |
Server
Acceleration |
As long ago as the mid 1980s,
engineers using SSDs in military
systems for type 1 applications (above) noticed that they also got speedup
benefits from using SSDs compared to using HDDs. Some
RAM based SSD products
were launched in the 1980s specifically to offer speedup (instead of
environmental survivability). But as hard disk interfaces got faster, and cache
became more common - most early SSD products aimed at the server acceleration
market had died out by the early 1990s.
In the period 2000 to 2005 -
SSDs started to become cost effective and viable in high end commercial server
applications. In the next several years the arguments for using SSDs for server
speedup will become more compelling and the market will change from SSDs being a
rare technical deployment in 2005 to being a commonplace item by 2008.
One
way of thinking about this concept in computer architecture is - SSD CPU
Equivalence.
For a wide range of applications if you take a black
box approach and analyze the overall application performance of a computer
system - you would not know whether that system had more CPUs with hard disks or
less CPUs with more SSDs.
In most multi-user database driven applications today the factor which
limits performance is not server MIPs but random disk access speed. In the past
20 years disk throughput (Megabytes per second) has increased by a factor of
x100 (from 1MB/s in 1986 using 5.25" SCSI disks to 100MB/s sustainable in
2005 using 3.5" SAS
disks) but the random access time has improved by a much smaller rate of only
x5 (3,000 RPM disks in 1985 versus 15,000 RPM disks in 2005.)
In the
same 20 year period - processor clock speeds have risen from 33MHz to over 3GHz.
The data bus widths have increased from 32 bits to 64 bits and new processor
chips include from 2 to 8 internal processors. That's a x400 to x1,600 increase
in data demand for a typical server.
Many users have discovered that
when they need faster performance they reach a bottleneck or ceiling which
cannot be improved by simply adding more processors or memory. But by adding
high speed SSDs to critical storage segments they can get application speedups
from x2 to x40. SSDs can deliver more than 1,000 times the random access speed
of hard disk based systems. If deployed correctly users can speed up their
applications and save money by neeeding less servers, less software licenses and
less systems to support.
The customer value proposition of
Server Acceleration is that SSDs double the speed of enterprise server
applications at a price which is much less than buying another 10 to 100
servers.
The user adoption of this technology has been slower than the
technology permits for the following reasons
- most users are not computer architects, and have no idea of what
performance they should expect from their systems
- server manufacturers have a disincentive to promote knowledge about SSD
accelerators - because this would result in them selling less servers - and
getting a reduced revenue stream
- most SSD vendors have been small or medium sized companies which didn't
have the marketing muscle to educate users about the technology
In the
present market - this type of sale is a technical sale - in which a user hits a
performance problem which can't be solved by their server supplier. In
desperation and in a sceptical frame of mind they evaluate SSD technology - and
are usually amazed by the results.
65% of SSD users surveyed
said "It greatly exceeded expectations - I advocate others to try"...
from the SSD Buyer
Market Preferences Report)
The transition from a niche to a
mainstream market will be helped by the following factors.
- Better user awareness - due to publications like this one, and better
marketing and education by SSD vendors.
- Server oems will start using SSDs as an engineering fix for big customers
who are disappointed by the performance of new generations of servers. The
mismatch betwen server IOPs and hard disk IOPs will become more apparent with 2
core and 8 core processor chips. Customers will want to know why their new
servers aren't any faster than their old ones. Eventually, faced with declining
server volumes, server oems will start to see selling SSDs as a revenue growth
opportunity instead of a revenue reducing one.
See also:-
RAM versus Flash
SSDs - which is Best? |
| 3 |
Road Warrior
Featherweight Notebooks
(weighing under 1kg / 2lbs) |
This market has not started yet
(in 2005) but will kick into play during 2006/7.
My wife is a marketer
who travels a lot by plane (in Europe) and train (in London). Running Powerpoint
is critical - but so is the ability to pack a notebook PC and a week's worth of
clothes and paperwork into a lightweight bag.
Notebook manufacturers
like Sony, Toshiba and Dell love this kind of customer. Her lightweight
notebooks typically cost 3 to 5 times as much as similar looking luggables
weighing 3 to 4 times as much. And she changes them every year - because they
never quite have enough performance.
In this part of the notebook
market customers pay a hefty price to get less weight and better battery
operation... And adding insult to injury - low weight notebooks also have
processor clock speeds which are typically 3 times slower than desktop PCs (or
luggable notebooks). The expensive notebooks also have slower hard disks
because that's another way manufacturers deliver longer battery life.
What
can flash SSDs do for this market?
A 30GB
flash solid state disk
can act as a speedup accelerator - complemeting a low power hard disk - so
that a 1GHz lightweight notebook processor delivers similar performance as a
3GHz desktop model. (As CPU clock rates rise - the benefit delivered by the SSD
actually increases.)
How much will high powered road warriors be
prepare to pay for a flash disk which makes their featherlight notebook PC run
as fast as a desktop or a luggable?
$2,000? $1,000?
You'll see
that the cost, compared to a hard drive is not the relevant factor.
The
customer value proposition in the Road Warrior Featherweight Notebook
market is that the SSD provides desktop application performance in a low
weight, long battery life form factor which is impossible to achieve using
microprocessor technology. (Where high speed - means high power, fans etc.)
As
flash disks are on a steeply declining cost curve - and new entrants to the SSD
market apply learning curve pricing this application segment for SSDs will grow
to billions of dollars in the next 2 years.
...Later:- January
10, 2006 - high performance Intel/SPARC notebook maker
NextCom
announced it had qualified flash SSDs in its notebooks and mobile servers,
thereby becoming the world's first notebook maker to publicly offer an SSD
option.
A
video
by Samsung (Q406) demonstrates the advantages of SSD accelerated notebooks
graphically.
...Later:- 2 years after writing this article -
in
April 2007 Dell offered 32G byte SSDs as an option in its notebooks priced
a little over $500.
Later:- June 2009 - many problems remained to be
solved as discussed in this article -
Overview of
the Notebook SSD Market |
| 4 |
High Reliability DAS
and
Infrastructure Blades |
Although the superior
reliability of SSDs has always been a factor in hostile environments (see 1
above) there are new SSD products which have been cost engineered to replace
disks in environments where hard disks actually operate without too much
trouble.
This is a conceptually new market - pioneered by
SiliconSystems
in 2004. But other flash SSD makers are also moving in too.
The
application is using high reliability flash SSDs to replace disks in servers to
reduce service calls and service timeouts. Some of the markets where this
approach can be used are in embedded systems in telecoms, cell phone hubs,
server farm blades, and physically distributed infrastructure machinery which
traditionally uses hard disks. This kind of embedded application often uses
much smaller capacity disks than PCs.
The customer value
proposition of the High Reliability DAS SSD is that the interval between
server failures will be extended by several years compared to HDD technology.
Since the cost of sending out an engineer to a remote cell phone hub
(say) to replace a hard disk is orders of magnitude more expensive than the
cost of the hardware - the SSD delivers much lower cost of ownership.
This
type of operating model suits utilities and other industries which have
geographically dispersed servers. But it can also apply to server farms in
datacenters too. Flash SSDs not only provide better reliability, but much lower
electrical power consumption and lower cooling costs too.
At first
glance - all flash SSDs offer better MTBF (mean time between failure) than hard
disks. But new design concepts and data management algorithms inside the SSDs
means that some vendors' flash disks offer operating lives which may be 2 to 3
times longer than others. We are still in the early days of this sophisticated
new market - which is far removed from the consumer market and typical corporate
datacenter. But as the capacity of these high reliability disks rises and the
cost benefits become better understood - we could see the concept moving into
more more traditional IT markets too. |
| 5 |
SSD Backup |
This is a new add-on to
the SSD market adoption model - added 7 years after the 1st edition and 5 years
after the text above.
Editor:- February 1, 2010 - later this month
StorageSearch.com will
publish a new article which describes the roadmap for the barely nascent
SSD Backup Market to replace the enterprise
hard disk backup market by
the close of this decade.
There will be many technology and
marketing challenges along the way. It will require entirely new types
of SSD products and new ways of thinking about what the purpose of
backup really is. You
may be thinking - "SSD backup... This can't be serious! Is it April 1st
already?" You may change your mind when you've read it. | |
Summary
SSDs
are seeping into many market applications long before the time that would be
predicted by analysts who cling to the outmoded model of cost per byte parity
with hard disks. This article has shown what I believe will be the biggest
markets for SSDs in the next 2 to 3 years. I will update the model from time to
time - and in the meantime keep tuned to the news and other developments as they
appear on our main SSD
page.
My thanks to all the people who have helped create this model by
their inputs, discussions and questions. I hope you too Dear Reader, find it
useful. As with all models which predict emerging markets - it is prone to being
wrong. But it's the best I have to offer at the present time. |
|
|
A few years ago our
main SSD page headlined
with this statement...
"The single big idea about SSD
acceleration is that it can give you the same performance increase as
doubling or trebling your processor clock speed! That means faster applications
response times or budget saving by deploying less enterprise servers
and better performance and longer battery life in notebooks.
As you
have seen in the article above - the SSD market is more complicated than that.
The switching points relate to customers and their applications and pain
points. This kind of customer segmentation is not just about what box the
customer has on their desktop or datacenter. Solving a business problem which a
customer doesn't have would make SSDs a bad buy at any price.
"SSD Eureka Moment"
...Later:- June
9, 2008 - commenting on the article
Is the SSD Market
Recession-Proof? Tomas Havrda, President
Solid Access
Technologies said this...
"The recession is a good technology
disinfector which tests the products as well as business models.
Flash SSD
publicity helped make customers aware there are other storage subsystems besides
spindle-based devices.
They then discover that there are
RAM SSDs. Customers are
saying "We can't keep doing what we are doing now". It is not easy to
get into the door, but when customers actually try the ultra fast SSD there is a
"eureka moment" where they don't return our demo and instead
buy it outright." |
| . |
Preparing for the Next
Phase in the SSD Market Revolution
Editor:- June 25, 2008 -STORAGEsearch.com
today called for new papers on the theme - "Understanding Data
Failure Modes in Large Solid State Storage Arrays".
The first
phase in the SSD market revolution was when users became aware of the potential
benefits of
SSDs and when these products reached price points many of them could afford.
The next phase will be when enterprise users move away from a technology
focused market (which is what they are being offered by vendors now) towards
an applications specific SSD market in which they have to choose which
products work best for their own specific deployments.
Users today
are faced with the dilemma of paying vastly different price points for products
which are superficially similar from the capacity and IOPS point of view - but
which may be vastly different in data reliability.
By "data
reliability" I don't mean that the SSD has failed - but that some data
within the SSD array has been altered or corrupted. (And will continue
accumulating data corruptions even if you swap in new replacement drives of the
same type.)
The cost of data corruption is different for different
applications and in different business applications.
Balancing risk
against cost is a decision users make when they choose a supplier - even if they
have not consciously analyzed the issues which matter. And choosing a more
expensive supplier doesn't protect the user from being mis-sold the wrong type
of product.
Many mistakes will be made by vendors and users.
For
the next phase in the SSD market revolution to continue momentum users need
guidance they can trust to help them navigate the many complex decisions which
are beyond performance speedup or power saving considerations. | | |
...Later:-
putting this article into a historical context.
This is
the original SSD market penetration model which was adopted by SSD product
marketers worldwide and helped to ignite the industry!
It debunked
the obsolete "price per gigabyte" argument and explained and predicted
the "customer value proposition" of SSDs in every strategic SSD market
application:- Hostile Environments, Server Acceleration, Road Warrior Notebooks
and High Reliability (hard disk replacement).
I know from the many
discussions I had with SSD product marketers and company founders leading upto
and just after this article's publication that the ideas and models discussed
here - helped those companies see the potential of this market in a new way -
which many of them went on to incorporate in their business plans. | |
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| There
are
hundreds
of articles about SSDs on StorageSearch.com |
Here, below, are some
examples.
- SSD
Market History - lists product and technology milestones in the 30 years of
the SSD market upto the end of 2009.
- RAM Cache
Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache
architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
- 2010 - 1st Fizz
in the SSD Bubble? - even the dogs in the street know this is going to be a
multibillion dollar market. Greed will play as big a part as technology in
shaping the
SSD year ahead.
- the pros and cons of
using SSD ASAPs - auto tuning SSD appliances are a new category of SSD
which entered the market in the 2nd half of 2009 to accelerate servers without
needing human tune-ups. How can you tell if they are right for you? And how
well do they work?
- the Problem
with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs - long established as a useful performance
modeling metric - this article explains why some specs are exaggerated when
applied to flash SSDs - or predict the wrong results for many common
applications.
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Flash
Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - article by Semico Research
There's
a confusing picture in many consumer products like phones, cameras and music
players in which one day it seems that the storage function is done by flash
and next day another company announces they're doing the same thing with
miniature hard disks.
Is there any sense to this seemingly random
choice?
This article uses pricing trends, technology trends and
unique market analysis insights to show that users and oems may be able to
reliably predict which storage devices will be most cost effective depending
where you are on the future history curve. ...read the article,
...Semico Research profile,
Hard disk drives,
Flash Memory,
Market research,
Solid state disks | |
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article:-
STORAGEsearch.com Solid State Disk Buyer Market Survey Results
STORAGEsearch
has been
charting the
rise of the Solid State Disk Market daily - since 1998.
In Q4
2004 we ran the industry's first major market survey designed to learn more
about buyers needs and preferences.
This article provides a summary
of highlights from the survey results.
The survey has identified
technical gaps which require new product solutions and service gaps which
require changes in the marketing plans of SSD vendors who need to change the
way they do business.
SSD vendors must take note of the signals
flagged in this survey if they wish to transform this market segment from a
niche technical market into a mainstream multi billion dollar pillar of the
storage market. | |
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