IT Perceptions Showed LSI/Sandforce as SSD Market Leader

IT Brand Pulse, a source of data and analysis about IT infrastructure, announced the results of the August 2012 Brand Leader Survey (19 pages, $3,950) devoted to SSD storage products by Cheryl Parker, director and senior analyst, End User Research.

The SSD market is an emerging market experiencing red-hot growth, but highly fragmented with dozens of specialized products and hundreds of vendors. Survey respondents were asked which vendors they perceive as the leader in ten product categories:

For each category, respondents chose the brand leader in Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation.

"Today, SSD technology is very specialized, and the emerging market is very fragmented", said Frank Berry, CEO of IT Brand Pulse. "This is highlighted by the fact that seven different companies were selected as market leaders in 10 different SSD product categories."

August 2012 Brand Leaders

it_brand_pulse_august_2012ssd_brand_leaders_jpeg_540_01

Highlights of the survey:

IT perceptions showed LSI (Sandforce) as the Market Leader in SSD Controller Chips. LSI also posted wins in the Price and Innovation categories, while Intel was the choice of end users in Performance, Reliability and Service & Support. Intel was the second top vote-getter in the Market category followed by Samsung.

it_brand_pulse_ssd_market_f2

"LSI SandForce helped pioneer the volume deployment of SSDs for enterprise, client and cloud computing by raising the bar on SSD performance, endurance and power efficiency with our award-winning SandForce Flash Storage Processors," said Thad Omura, VP marketing, Flash Components Division, LSI Corporation. "LSI’s selection by IT professionals as the market and innovation leader is validation of our sustained technology leadership and unique total solution approach for accelerating time-to-market for SSD manufacturers."

Extending its product category dominance in the survey, Nimbus Data emerged as the Market Leader in Unified SAN/NAS SSD Systems and led the way in Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation. Whiptail was ranked second in Market above third place winner, Skyera.

"We are thrilled to receive IT rand Pulse awards and recognition for both Nimbus and the rapidly-growing solid state industry," stated Scott Kline, director of Corporate Communications of Nimbus Data Systems. "Our early vision to design this unified and truly purpose built flash platform has allowed us the versatility and flexibility to offer best-in-class all-flash primary storage systems. This unique architecture has helped our customers overcome longstanding challenges they have faced with regards to virtualization, databases and efficiency in both the datacenter and enterprise."

In the All Flash SAN SSD Systems survey, Texas Memory Systems captured the Market Leader award; took top spots in Performance, Reliability, and Service & Support and tied in the categories of Price (with Next IO) and Innovation (3-way tie with Pure Storage and Violin Memory). Respondents chose NextIO as the Market Leader runner-up.

Texas Memory Systems continued its high-profile presence in this month’s survey by sweeping all six categories in DRAM SAN SSD Systems. Kaminiario and Kove were the second-and third-place finishers, respectively, in Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service& Support and Innovation.

Voting in the All Flash NAS SSD Systems revealed Nimbus Data as the leader in Market and the five other categories (Price, Performance, Reliability, Service& Support and Innovation). Whiptail came in second in all categories and Skyera was the third pick.

Intel was selected as the Market Leader for SAS/SATA SSD Modules and as the top brand in all five remaining categories. Seagate finished behind Intel in Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation but it was OCZ Technology which took the runner-up spot in Price leadership.

In the PCIe SSD (not cache) survey, brand leadership was split with Fusion-io ranking number one in Market, Performance, and Innovation, and Intel heading up the Price, Reliability, and Service & Support categories. Each finished behind the other in the opposing category, with SanDisk placing third across the board.

IT professionals voted EMC as Market Leader for Cache SSD (SW and HW) and in four of the five remaining categories; giving the Innovation award to Fusion-io. Fusion-io was ranked second in every category except for a tie with SanDisk in Price, and a third place spot behind NetApp in Service & Support. SanDisk came in at number three for Market Leader.

Respondents ranked EMC number one in Hybrid SSD/HDD Storage Systems for Market, Performance and Reliability, but handed the Price award to Dell, and the Service & Support and Innovation categories to IBM. NetApp secured second place as Market Leader with HP rounding out third.

Cache IQ landed the Market Leader title in NAS Cache Appliances and was at the top in Price, Reliability, and Service & Support. Violin Memory captured both the Performance and Innovation brand awards and finished second in all other categories.