Enterprise SSD drive market set for growth

The enterprise SSD market is set for high groth as magnetic media are displaced.

Falling prices and increasing sizes are going to make solid state drives (SSD) an increasingly attractive option for enterprises according to a new report.

The report from Objective Analysis predicts that the market for enterprise SSDs will grow from 150,000 units today to more than 4.1 million units by 2015.

"That's a growth rate of 90 per cent per annum, which will complemented by a annual revenue growth rate of 55 per cent, which reflects the rapid take-up and the falling prices that we are continuing to see in the SSD marketplace," said Andy Cordial, managing director with Origin Storage which commissioned the research.

"If you delve into the report, you find that the magnetic hard drive market is predicted to shrink considerably over the next five years, with the slack being more than taken up by SSD technology."

The growth will primarily come from high data traffic application like transaction processing, according to the report `Enterprise SSDs: Technologies & Markets'

"It's interesting that the report notes that SSDs - in the enterprise market at least - are still in their infancy. The growth we are observing in the market is incredible, as we're also seeing firms such as Intel and Kingston releasing SSDs in lower capacities of around the 30 gigabyte mark, allowing them to be used as boot drives," he said.

Seagate has recently released its fastest every SSD drive and other manufacturers are getting into the highly-profitable space.