Seagate pushes SSD plans back to 2009

Understanding there is a storage mini-revolution underway, Seagate plans to launch enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs) sometime in 2009.  The company originally wanted to have an SSD product released before the end of 2008, but will hold off as it tries to perfect the technology.

Seagate will enter the market and try to make an immediate impact, Rich Vignes, senior manager of Segate market development, told CNet during a recent interview.  It wasn’t that long ago when Seagate CEO Bill Watkins said he didn’t see flash notebooks selling, but is willing to give the growing market a try.

"Our history is based on rotating magnetic media," Vignes said during the interview.  "But as solid-state comes online, we’re embracing this new media type.  As companies like Seagate start to demonstrate field-proven reliability and endurance in enterprise applications, we’ll overcome those (solid-state drive) endurance fears."

Even though SSDs remain a small part of the overall data storage picture, anticipated price drops and improved performance over traditional hard disk drives makes it an appealing technology for the future.

Seagate’s hardest problem will be to convince its enterprise clients to take a risk on SSDs when regular HDDs have served them well over the years.  Companies want both life expectancy and speed, and an industry standard on the life expectancy of an enterprise SSD is relatively unknown.

As more companies begin to create SSD products for the enterprise and consumer market, endurance and other SSDs issues will slowly be alleviated, analysts believe.