Enterprise HDD Market Structure
The Enterprise HDD segment worldwide revenue is currently around $4.5B on around 25M units shipped.
The Enterprise drive types are differentiated by spindle speed and form factor: 10k rpm and 15k rpm, and 3.5” / 2.5” form factor. (2.5” Enterprise is also called SFF – for Small Form Factor). About two-thirds of all Enterprise HDD’s go into servers, and the rest to the Enterprise Storage segment.
IOPS performance is an issue for at least 40% of these applications. These systems already pay premium prices for HDD’s and use various techniques to improve performance, all of which add extra cost. Multi-actuator HDD’s are the ideal, affordable solution for 15k, 10k and 7.2k rpm disk drives.
Enterprise HDD Market Dynamics
It is expected that the 15k rpm drive segment will be impacted first by Enterprise SSD’s, with 2011-12 being the key period. Because this is the most profitable segment of the HDD industry, existing HDD suppliers are actively defending it. Disk-IOPS technology will enable the industry to produce performance-enhanced drives at attractive margins.
Disk-IOPS performance analysis indicates strongly that a 4-actuator design is the “sweet spot” for best performance within other practical constraints including power and unit cost. The company has assessed a number of possible configurations at different performance points, including 7,200 rpm.
The Disk-IOPS technology includes a number of other HDD design improvements beyond the multiple-actuator technology.