IBM on top of 2013 All Flash market

Gartner places IBM in the lead for 2013 all-flash array sales

(Excerpt)

Revenue from IBM’s FlashSystem product line increased 278% year-over-year from $43.4 million in 2012 to $164.4 million in 2013. IBM commanded about a quarter of the all-flash array market, as its share grew from 18.4% to 24.6%. The FlashSystem platform came from IBM’s 2012 of Texas Memory System.

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Violin Memory dropped from first in 2012 to third last year. Violin’s revenue increased by 22.6%, from $72.1 million to $88.3 million, but the company’s market share fell from 30.5% to 13.2% in 2013, according to Gartner.

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Under Gartner’s revised SSA market calculation, EMC is now able to count revenue from only its XtremIO and VNX-F arrays, which were released last November. Despite the short time frame, the EMC all-flash systems placed fourth for the year, with $73.9 million in revenue, and EMC held 11.1% of the market.

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In fifth place, NetApp all-flash revenue grew 126.5% for its EF540 all-flash array to $71 million. Nimbus Data Systems also more than doubled its revenue, from $21.6 million to $43.4 million, and placed sixth for the year, according to Gartner.

Filling out the top 10 were Kaminario ($22.5 million), Cisco ($21.4 million), SolidFire ($20.4 million) and Hewlett-Packard ($8.8 million). The total market grew 182% from 2012 to 2013, from $236.5 million to $667.3 million, using Gartner’s revised SSA reporting metrics.

According to the Gartner report, end users purchased 5,281 solid-state array units in 2013 at an average selling price of $126,360, or $9.70 per GB. The most popular capacity range was 10 TB to 19.99 TB, with a total of 2,126 units shipping at an average selling price of $118,647, or $11.59 per GB.

Runners-up were solid-state arrays in the range of 20 TB to 49.99 TB. A total of 1,629 units shipped at an average selling price of $180,699, or $8.82 per GB. Just 171 solid-state arrays of greater than 50 TB shipped last year, at an average selling price of $223,169, or $4.36 per GB. But, that could change this year now that most SSA vendors are making available arrays at higher capacities.

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Compare SSD Flash Memory Vendors with Pricing

UPDATE: Pure Storage lawyers requested that we remove all pricing information (publicly available with a quick search). We complied.

This post highlights the most popular Solid State Disk/Flash vendors and provides a chart to help decipher their costs. This data has been aggregated from various sources so no claims are made as to its accuracy.

In some cases the manufacturers provide a link to “Self-Service Pricing” via EchoQuote™ so you can get up to date pricing information quickly, often in minuts (last column).

Top 10 Solid State/Flash Array Vendors in Alphabetical order:

Vendor Category Pricing
Astute Networks Flash Memory Arrays Not Available
Fusion-io Pricing Solid-State PCI Express Cards (Nexsan acquisition may put it on path to full appliance gear) Not Available
Range $2-$5/GB
Nimbus Data Pricing Flash Memory Arrays Not Available
Per 2012 article – $150K for 10TB dual configuration
OCZ Pricing Flash PCI Express Cards Not Available
Range $2-$5/GB
Skyera Pricing Flash Memory Arrays Not Available
Texas Memory Systems Pricing PCI Cards
Flash Memory Arrays
Not Available
Virident Pricing PCI Cards
Flash PCI Express Cards
Flash Max II
Starts at $6000
VIOLIN Systems Pricing NVMe Flash Arrays Velocity cards come in 1.37, 2.75, 5.5 and 11TB raw capacity versions at a list price cost of $6/GB for all of them except the entry-level 1.37TB card which lists at $3/GB.Flash Max II
Get a Self-Service Quote at our Violin Systems Pricing page.
Whiptail Pricing PCI Cards
Flash Memory Arrays
From $50K to $250K for multi-terabyte arrays
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Violin Memory Pricing for PCIe cards

Original article by Maria Deutscher at Silicon Angle

It’s turning out to be a big week for flash. Violin Memory, one of the largest suppliers of SSD-based storage solutions, announced a new product line-up called Velocity. The lineup features three PCIe server cards with 1.37, 2.75, 5.5 and 11TB of raw storage.

These four capacity levels will be priced at $4,200, $16,900, $33,800 and $67,500, respectively. With the new line-up, Violin is making a strategic play in the pricing game, simplifying and streamlining the supply chain. The deal with Toshiba is an important factor in Violin’s plan, empowering the storage provider to better manage the ebb and flow of NAND pricing.

Now for the specs. Sustained performance using 4KB blocks measures at 120,000 IOPS for the 1.37 card, 1000, 270,000 and 540,000 IOPS for the 2.75, 5.5 and 11TB cards. This figure jumps above one million IOPS in setups where 512KB blocks are used instead.

The new Violin chips run barebone firmware that supports Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and VMware. Compatibility for management software from other vendors will probably roll out with future patches.

The other important feature of Velocity, beside the performance and support, is that the chips are completely self-contained. This means that software can be booted faster and without help from the host server, something that the competition – that is to say Fusion-io’s competing PCIe chips – can’t do.

The launch is backed by Toshiba, one of Violin’s earliest backers and its top distributor in Japan. The manufacturer will leverage Velocity to enhance its storage portfolio.

Hiroyuki Sato, storage products division veep at Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor & Storage Products Company, said: “The PCIe card market is important to Toshiba’s customers. Expanding our strategic relationship with Violin Memory will allow us to bring the valuable Violin enterprise intellectual property to a broad range [of] industry-leading solutions in our future product offerings.”

Flash is hot, and Toshiba is not the only whale in the ocean looking to make the most of the technology. Earlier this week Seagate had a PCIe update all its own, while last month NetApp announced an all-flash array for software-driven environments that’s more scalable and efficient than less abstracted solutions.

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