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StorageSearch.comenterprise buyers guides since 1991 |
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| "leading the way to the new storage frontier" |
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| Historical Data Which
Supports the SSD Market Size Model STORAGEsearch Reader Pageviews There has been significant growth in reader interest in solid state disks. In Q1 2001 - SSDs were the 18th most popular subject. In Q1 2002 - SSDs were #4. In Q1 2003 - SSDs were #2. In Q2 2003 - SSDs were #1. That means more readers than viewed our NAS page for example. Clearly something has been happening in the market to accelerate reader interest. That was the first clue. Our readership tracks the interests of hundreds of thousands of people who looks for storage focused content on the web. Our 11 year history as an IT directory publisher, strongly indicates that changing reader interest in subjects is a strong predictor of future market growth. It can take several quarters for that revenue to occur, and upto a year before it is reported by market research organizations which track revenue. But during 8 years of tracking these trends online in the Sun and storage markets, we know that the effects are real. As a sanity check - consider that Serial ATA was the #1 product category on STORAGEsearch in the 2nd half of 2002 - clearly predicting future interest in a market, which at that stage didn't have many real shippable products. It's the changes in these rankings which are important. Some categories stay in the top 5 year after year. But when products get into the top 5 from relative obscurity, that signals volume changes are about to happen. other Market Researchers In a May 2003 press release, Gartner said the removable flash SSD market was worth $2Billion in 2002 and grew 73%. That's only part of the SSD market and excludes DRAM based products. SSD Manufacturers Many SSD companies have disclosed to us that their own revenue growth has been significantly higher than 100% year on year. Looking Ahead - Market Trends - Which Supports the SSD Market Size Model introducing new concept in computer architecture - SSD CPU Equivalence Our analysis at STORAGEsearch.com is that the correct market size for SSDs (used as server accelerators) is on the order of $10 billion The factors which will drive this are as follows 1 - users in the early adopter category have discovered that within their IT budgets they can increase application performance at lower cost by switching spend away from server CPUs over to SSD accelerators. For example customers looking to upgrade heavily utilised 60 CPU Sun systems can choose between doubling CPUs by buying new servers or spending about 25% of that server cost on SSDs. Other users, lower down the scale, have been reported as taking servers out of use to reduce software costs, and using SSDs to make up the performance difference. Therefore the SSD accelerator market should be viewed as a replacement for part of the server CPU market. Not as a percentage of storage spend. 2 - Sun and others in the 64 bit server market have already seen decreasing returns in server performance with higher GHz CPUs. This trend will get worse when new generation Intel and Sun processors, which use more CPUs per chip come into mid range products. Future growth in server performance will not be possible unless server OEMs start to architect their systems to include SSDs as a standard option. 3 - Historically the SSD market has been limited by poor software tools. Users were unable to get promised speedups without extensive technical knowledge. Recent software tools from Imperial, BiTMICRO and others hold the promise that users or VARs can tune their own systems. Therefore sales ramps will no longer be limited by application engineer headcounts in the SSD companies. 4 - upto Q2 2003, the major server oems, IBM, HP, Dell and Sun have not been involved in any significant way in the SSD market. But when markets reach a critical size, the big companies will step in to protect declining server revenues. This will most likely start with the acquisition of SSD companies and OEM badge agreements. The effect will be that SSD technology will be marketed by companies which are more familiar to users than the SSD pioneers. These factors will accelerate the market growth and channels to market for SSD technology. Conclusion Extrapolating from the current market size, and with the potential to replace other products (such as server CPUs and application software licensing), it is reasonable to assume that the trends now seen in the SSD industry are part of a disruptive change in the computer market which could propel Solid State Disks into a $10 Billion Market by the end of the decade. | ||||||||||||
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| Solid State Disk Manufacturers | STORAGEsearch | SPARC Product Directory | ACSL - the publisher |
