Ace hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturer,
Seagate Technology plc
(
STX
) is reportedly joining forces with
Super Micro Computer Inc.
(
SMCI
). Financial details of the deal were kept confidential.
California-based Supermicro provides hybrid server solutions. The
company's product portfolio includes rackmount, tower and blade
server systems, high-end workstations, storage server systems,
motherboards, chassis, and various server components.
Per the terms of the deal, Supermicro will offer Seagate's Pulsar
family of solid state drives (SSDs). The entire list of Pulsar SSD
offerings, along with the latest Pulsar.2 will be displayed on
Supermicro's product website. This will not only expand the choice
of offerings for Supermicro's customers, but will help in wide
market acceptance of Seagate's Pulsar portfolio.
Apart from this, Seagate also announced that Nor-Tech, a provider
of high performance computing solutions, has opted for its Pulsar
SSDs. Nor-Tech will be using Pulsar in its Lustre Cluster
metadata server. The company has also used Pulsar in its VoyStor
Storage Server, which is currently powering the University of
Minnesota in pursuing hydropower and wind energy research.
Seagate pulsar is an enterprise-class SSD, available in capacities
starting from 50 GB (gigabyte) to 200 GB. The latest iteration can
store up to 800 GB. The Pulsar facilitates automatic, quick
input/output error detection and correction. It also protects data
in case of sudden power outages.
Seagate is mainly known for HDDs. However, keeping up with the
shifting trend toward SSDs from traditional HDDs, Seagate has
already been dealing with SSD products for the past several years.
But it has struggled a lot to gain significant traction. In April
2011, Seagate added Samsung Electronics Co.'s HDD business, which
gave the company access to Samsung's NAND-type flash chips for its
solid state drive products.
The SSDs are non-volatile (unlike HDDs) and shock resistant,
offering high speed and consuming less power. Despite their high
prices, these drives are preferred by many OEMs (original equipment
manufacturers). All major tablets that have been announced or
shipped this year use flash chips in place of a spinning hard disk
drive for storage. Smartphones also use NAND flash, as do many
netbooks. Hence, with Pulsar, Seagate has ample opportunities in
the growing SSD space.
Despite growth opportunities, a lackluster PC market and slowing
demand for HDDs led to a Zacks #3 Rank, implying a short-term
"Hold" rating on Seagate shares.
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