IDC Reports Solid State Disks Are the Right Products for Boosting Performance in Tough Times 

Storage Virtualization to Increase SSD Market Growth

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., January 29, 2002 –- An IDC Bulletin released last month reports solid state disks (SSDs) are increasingly being accepted as a cost-effective solution for boosting application performance and removing I/O bottlenecks. The Bulletin positions SSDs as a "smart choice" in tough times, and projects end users' commitment to solid state disks to increase. 

"Too often, end users faced with performance issues or poor I/O response take the unnecessarily expensive 'brute force' approach of simply adding more servers or more disk drives to spread the workload," asserts co-author Robert Gray. "While many users take one or both of these paths to scalability, IDC believes that many would be better served and benefit from a thorough performance analysis that includes a review of SSD capabilities." 

Solid state disks are storage-centric architectural components where critical "hot files" are locked into a dedicated cache to ensure they are instantly available 100% of the time. In transaction-intensive database and OLTP applications, SSDs quickly eliminate I/O bottlenecks and improve system throughput, thereby reducing response times for end-users.

The IDC Bulletin notes several factors driving the market, including lower prices, applications increasingly unfriendly to rotating disk drives, and the growing gap between disk I/O performance and CPU MIPS performance. But the most important growth factor, the report concludes, is the emergence of the storage virtualization layer and virtualization products. 

Storage Virtualization separates the logical representation of storage from the physical devices themselves. This division of physical storage from the logical storage space turns storage into a generally available utility pool, which is easily divided among multiple applications. By adding a solid state disk into this virtual storage pool, the acceleration capabilities of the SSD can be leveraged across all servers in the SAN, regardless of platform, operating system, or application type. The IDC Bulletin views virtualization as a large contributor to the growth potential and concludes by saying, "The SAN virtualization layer evolution and penetration is a powerful opportunity to have SSDs finally achieve their long-delayed potential."

IDC's Bulletin, Solid State Disks: The Right Products for Boosting Performance in Tough Times-Product and Market Analysis, 2001 (IDC #26241E) provides a comprehensive analysis of the solid state disk market, and file cache devices. The report is available from Imperial Technology at www.imperialtechnology.com.

About IDC
IDC is the foremost global market intelligence and advisory firm helping clients gain insight into technology and e-business trends to develop sound business strategies. Using a combination of rigorous primary research, in-depth analysis, and client interaction, IDC forecasts worldwide markets and trends to deliver dependable service and client advice. More than 700 analysts in 43 countries provide global research with local content. IDC's customers comprise the world's leading IT suppliers, IT organizations, ebusiness companies and the financial community. 

IDC is a division of IDG, the world's leading IT media, research, and exposition company.

About Imperial Technology, Inc.
Headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., Imperial Technology has over a decade of experience designing and manufacturing high-performance storage systems that shatter I/O bottlenecks to supercharge traditional storage. Imperial's products are installed on Sun, HP, Compaq/Digital, IBM and Unisys systems. They integrate and install seamlessly in environments that run Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), Sybase (NASDAQ: SYBS), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Veritas (NASDAQ: VRTS) and FalconStor (NASDAQ: FALC) products. Imperial Technology can be reached at (714) 657-3542 or online at www.imperialtechnology.com.