OCZ Technology Group has rapidly built up a small empire since inception in 2002, winning over huge swathes of the market and becoming a serious leader in solid-state drive (SSD) technology, which is extremely fast and efficient compared to the standard hard disk drives (HDD) that are used in nearly all desktop and laptop PCs today.
While OCZ has established a major presence in the SSD market, the company is also well-known for their high-performance components and peripherals, like enterprise/gamer class power supplies and USB 2.0 flash memory sticks. Exceptional performance, substantially faster access times, better reliability, more efficient power usage, and silent operation are all key factors making OCZ’s SSD technology the hottest thing in computer components.
This San Jose, CA-based tech powerhouse offers such a wide range of drive solutions that serve enterprise, workstation, and prosumers enthusiasts who want maximum performance for gaming, video-editing, or other data-access intensive tasks. The SATA II (3Gbps interfaces) offerings have really been a major force for OCZ, ranging in size from MSATA and 1.8” for upgrading the latest notebooks, to 2.5” (a good balance of storage and performance) and 3.5” (ranging up to one terabyte configurations for no sacrifice of storage space for performance) for desktop computing platforms.
OCZ also offers a range of SATA III (6Gbps interfaces like the SATA 6Gbps Indilinx Everest platform – OCZ acquired Indilinx Co., Ltd in March, 2011) SSDs in 2.5”, with products like the OCZ Petrol really shining as a value offering with amazing performance, or the company’s flagship SSD drive, the OCZ Vertex 3 (60-480GB models, 4k file writes up to 85k IOPS, TRIM support to optimize Windows 7 performance), which was recently hailed by PC Magazine as “the fastest tested overall” and the best offering in its space, allowing consumers to move into SSD without sacrificing storage.
One of the lagging concerns about the technology has always been space, with early adopters sacrificing storage for performance or utilizing a hybrid solution of their own consisting of self-managed storage via a mix of SSD and HDD, a process which is clunky at best. Well, the company even found a way to emulate this in one product and circumvent the hassle, making it easier than ever for reluctant users with their RevoDrive Hybrid PCI Express (highest performing hybrid drive on the market), which marries HDD and SSD into one solution, also eliminating SATA bottlenecking. The RevoDrive Hybrid clocks a massive 910MB/s bandwidth (120k IOPS – 4k random write) for true SSD-like performance, using VCA 2.0 flash virtualization software to achieve the supreme mix between cold and hot storage, leveraging OCZ’s own exclusive command queuing and queue balancing algorithms.
Having taken a major lead in SSDs for today’s emerging ultra-light, high-performance laptops, OCZ looks very promising with this year’s revenues growing at a rate of around 90%. A recent announcement has shown broader industry support as well for enterprise rackmount arrays of SSD and the like, with nearby storage area network (SAN) innovator Drobo, Inc. announcing they will use the OCZ Talos SAS SSD Series in their new B1200i iSCSI SAN solution (a silver bullet kind of high-performance storage solution for server virtualization and etc. ideal for small- to mid-sized businesses).
While other products may achieve these ends, OCZ set out to bring tailored enterprise computing solutions to the next level with OCZ enterprise (www.oczenterprise.com) solutions like the Talos, or the revolutionary Deneva 2-3 products, hailed by senior analyst at Storage Switzerland, LLC, George Crump as in most cases being “faster than any drive tested so far.” A broad portfolio of enterprise solutions in the same variety of interfaces (PCIe, SATA, etc.) designed to deliver peak performance, while fully supporting a rich enterprise feature-set, allowing for maximum flexibility, reliability, and efficiency in high throughput, mission critical systems.
It is this clear ability of the underlying technology and the company’s intelligent approach to designing solutions that cover all valuable gaps in the market, which has propelled OCZ to such success. The company is one of the fastest growers in this emerging space and as more and more people enter the computing market in general, the demand for SSD technology will continue to skyrocket. From the outset OCZ’s strategy has been to bring this powerful storage technology to a broader user base, ranging from enthusiasts and gamers up to enterprise-class business.
Demonstrating OCZ enterprise solutions like the Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCIe SSDs (huge boon for storage architects), which will accompany a demo of the SANRAD VXL Storage Accelerator software (Sanrad was acquired by OCZ in Jan, 2012 for some $15M), and other offerings like the cutting-edge Vertex 4 SSD Series (based on version 2 of the SATA 6Gbps Indilinx Everest platform) at the 2012 CeBIT tradeshow in Hannover, Germany, this year should bring even more investors/consumers to the table.
For more information on this constantly evolving SSD developer, please visit the OCZ Technology Group, Inc. website at: www.OCZTechnology.com
About MissionIR
MissionIR is committed to connecting the investment community with companies that have great potential and a strong dedication to building shareholder value. We know our reputation is based on the integrity of our clients and go to great lengths to ensure the companies represented adhere to sound business practices.
Sign up for “The Mission Report” at www.MissionIR.com
Please see disclaimer on the MissionIR website http://www.missionir.com/disclaimer.html
