SSD maker OCZ has been on something of a tear recently, introducing three new solid state storage products in three weeks:
- Two weeks ago the company introduced the Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCIe SSD, designed for the data center, in single-card capacities ranging from 300GB-16TB. This product can transfer data at multiple gigabytes per second rates to deliver over a million IOPS.
- Last week saw the introduction of the OCZ-SANRAD VXL enterprise storage accelerator, after OCZ’s January acquisition of SANRAD. This product is flash cache acceleration software for VMware ESX and Citrix Xen virtualized environments that allows any OCZ R4 PCIe Z-Drive to serve as an accelerator for standard iSCSI and FC storage arrays. The product is promoted as a less-costly alternative to tier-1 SANs in enterprise IT configurations ranging from application virtualization to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). OCZ tells us that this system allows seamless migration of virtual machines from one physical host to another without loss of access to the flash cache or a sudden performance drop.
- Today OCZ announced the Vertex 4 SSD series of SSDs based on the SATA 6Gbps Indilinx Everest 2 platform.
It’s kind of inspiring to see how quickly and how well OCZ has jumped onto the SSD bandwagon. Over the past three years the company has transformed itself from a slow growing “me too” competitor in the DRAM, cooling system, and power supply business (for the gamer/enthusiast market) to a leading powerhouse in SSDs.
OCZ has a corporate culture that can be given credit for this growth. The company tries to find a way to satisfy the need for any SSD configuration and regularly takes custom orders, understanding that some of these custom configurations may appeal to a larger market. It also focuses a significant amount of attention on time-to-market. Where a long-established HDD supplier like Seagate will performs exhaustive tests to assure the highest level of reliability before introducing an SSD, OCZ understands that any delay could cost the company valuable sales so it streamlines the introduction process.
For more information on the SSD market The SSD Guy recommends either of the two main Objective Analysis SSD reports Solid State Disk Market Outlook, and The Enterprise SSD: Technologies & Markets, both of which can be ordered for immediate download from the Objective Analysis website.
