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Looking Forward

Seagate - The Year in Storage
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To be sure, there were other storage forces in play during 2012. One of the quietest but potentially most significant was the move of SSD vendors away from single-level cell (SLC) memory for enterprise drives. The combination of higher cost, lower capacity, and rapidly improving endurance of MLC memory rendered SLC increasingly superfluous. We expect increasing numbers of manufacturers to go multi-level cell (MLC) only in 2013 and beyond. This will alter the cost dynamics of the enterprise storage market since there will no longer be a clear price premium for top-endurance NAND.

Another silent trend is the move to making self-encrypting drives (SEDs) universal. In part because encryption is often perceived as adding a layer of complexity and cost onto drive management, many users overlook on-drive encryption when considering HDD or SSD options. However, the cost for cryptographic ASICs has fallen to the point where, just as with hybrid drives, there is very little cost added for the technology. For example, Seagate’s Savvio 10K6 costs the same for both the SED and non-encrypting model. An increasing number of SSD include encryption and don’t even bother to market the fact, perhaps not wanting to confuse some buyers. If users don’t want to implement the encryption features, the technology continues to work, but it remains like a door with no lock on it, totally transparent to the user.

All told, 2012 was a quiet year in storage, but it set the stage for some excellent, needed advances in 2013. Expect great things from the major vendors. Above all, keep an eye on these developments and consider how to weave them into your own storage plans for maximum performance and profit.