Is the Game really over for some SSD companies?

shalooshalini

http://www.storagereview.com/it_s_game_over_for_most_consumer_ssd_companies

It says - "Consumers should only be buying SSDs from Samsung, Crucial/Micron, OCZ (Toshiba), SanDisk and Intel. " What are your thoughts about it? And what about the Enterprise customers of SSD? Which vendors make it to the top of the list in enterprise - SSD vendors I mean. According to the link here http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/3751.html it seems like Samsung, Toshiba, Micron, Sandisk, Intel and SK Hynix could be those - or am I missing something here?

Carnival Boy

I've been buying Kingston for work. Not sure if they manufacture or just re-badge?

Plus a few HPs for CAD workstations. Who makes HPs?

Bill Kindle

They assume that these other vendors will vanish completely, but make no mention of buyouts from larger firms listed. Besides, who buys consumer SSD's for enterprise use anyways?

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

I've been buying Kingston for work. Not sure if they manufacture or just re-badge?

Plus a few HPs for CAD workstations. Who makes HPs?

I'm sure HP is sourced and probably not consistent. You'd have to check each one.

jasonh

We've been deploying SSDs in all our 30+ laptops for the last 4+ years. In the beginning we mostly used Kingston and a few OCZ, but in the last 2 years have been going with Intel whenever possible (sometimes hard to find stock on the smaller sizes) or Samsung. We experienced a lot of premature failures with Kingston drives, many of them with less than 1 year of service. Their warranty process was a nuisance. At one point they also had issues with buggy firmware which bricked a few drives.. The few OCZs lasted a long time but I believe they have all failed now (after 3-4 years; which is kind of expected with SSDs.) So far no issues with any Intel or Samsung drives knock on wood

shalooshalini

@jasonh : Thanks for sharing. Intel and SamSung are pretty much the leaders in the market. (Recent Gartner report June 13, 2014)

SSD Revenues

Samsung $3.1b in revenue leads SSD sales - majority of revenue is attributed to PC SSD Sales.
At #2 is Intel($1.4b), #3 is SanDisk($1.3b), #4 Micron($0.8b), #5 Toshiba ($0.6b)

In the enterprise, the SSD reliability reality may TOO match the report:http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/storage-soup/gartner-report-places-ibm-pure-storage-atop-2013-all-flash-array-market/ . Look forward to hearing from enterprise users of SSD (server admins, non PC users).

Enterprise SSD Revenues

Total sales $4.4b, Hyperscale customers are purchasing low-cost SATA SSDs in huge volumes whereas Storage Manufactures are buying higher quality SAS SSDs.
SATA SSDs: Intel lead producer of enterprise SATA SSDs, followed by Samsung, Smart Storage, OCZ and SanDisk.
SAS SSDs: WD is #1 is SAS based SSD market followed by SanDIsk, Seagate, Toshiba and Hitachi
PCIe SSDs: FusionIO is #1 followed by Google, NetApp, LSI and WD at #5. NOTE: Google, NetApp and Hitachi use their own PCIe SSDs within their own data centers - no external enterprise customers

With SanDisk's recent acquisition of FusionIO, they may pose a threat to Intel's SSD market.