Gamezoom - Gamezoom Talk - Interview mit Tobias Brinkmann von OCZ Storage Solutions

Gamezoom Talk - Interview mit Tobias Brinkmann von OCZ Storage Solutions

In unserem Interview (aus Gründen der Aktualität auf Englisch) mit Tobias Brinkmann von OCZ Storage Solutions sprechen wir über die Zukunft des Unternehmens und Hinterfragen die SSD-Branche.

Von Christoph Miklos am 27.02.2014 - 20:04 Uhr

Fakten

Hersteller

OCZ Storage Solutions

Release

Januar 2014

Produkt

SSD

Preis

ab 160,13 Euro

Webseite

Link

OCZ Vertex 460 240GB Preisvergleich

Media (2)

Galerie

Einleitung

In unserem Interview (aus Gründen der Aktualität auf Englisch) mit Tobias Brinkmann von OCZ Storage Solutions sprechen wir über die Zukunft des Unternehmens und Hinterfragen die SSD-Branche.
Question 1: Hi Tobias. Could you please introduce yourself? I started in the IT industry back in 2001 which now seems a lifetime ago. That was at Komplett, a company which pioneered and revolutionized online shopping in Scandinavia and today is the largest e-commerce player in region with over 14 webshops. After more than 5 years at Komplett I joined OCZ, which at the time manufactured high performance memory and a number of other premium computer components. I stayed with OCZ for close to 4 years during which we transitioned our business to focus on SSDs . After a short stint in the consumer electronics industry, I returned to OCZ back in 2011 and here we are. Question 2: OCZ had a quite turbulent year in 2013. Can you briefly summarize what happened? 2013 was indeed a turbulent year for OCZ as we faced a number of challenges: We went through a restatement which primarily related to the timing of revenue recognition, the classification of certain customer incentive costs and for the level of reserves for product returns.
What we have been missing in the recent past is the direct access to NAND which you need in the SSD market today in order to stay competitive and position yourself as a relevant player.
The SSD market is one of the fastest growing segments in the IT industry today. According to analysts the market size will be over $23 billion by 2017 so having that direct access to NAND will be a major competitive advantage.
Our goal is now to grow market share again both in the consumer and enterprise space. OCZ was among the very first companies to launch a consumer SSD back in 2008. Since then we have established a large IP and patent portfolio both through in house development and acquisitions. Our Barefoot 3 controller is one, if not the highest performing controller on the market, especially when it comes to sustained performance.
We now have all four pillars that will enable us to grow market share: a market leading in-house controller, application software, firmware and direct access to NAND.

Bild 1/1 (Galerie öffnen)

Question 3: What impact has the acquisition from Toshiba for current and future products from OCZ? Or in other words: Has Toshiba the last word in developing new products? OCZ Storage Solutions is part of the Toshiba Group but will operate as a separate entity. As such we are going to continue to launch market leading products and solutions for our target markets. We have our own R&D team which will now of course work closely with Toshiba, something that ultimately will benefit us and the market.
Toshiba will continue its own development, production and marketing of Toshiba branded SSDs while the new company, OCZ Storage Solutions, will also continue to sell its own OCZ branded SSD products through its own well established global sales channels
Question 4: What new products can we expect in the coming month? The launch of the Vertex 460 which uses Toshiba 19nm NAND, came just a few days after the acquisition had been announced. Our flagship consumer SSD, the Vector series, was already based on Toshiba NAND, now all our client drives utilize premium Toshiba NAND. When it comes to our enterprise product offering, we recently launched the Intrepid 3000 series with Toshiba NAND and we are going to continue to transition other products in the near future. For the enthusiast, workstation and entry-level server market we are soon going to announce our new RevoDrive which will be based on 19nm Toshiba NAND and feature our own Barefoot 3 controller – the result is going to be an even higher performing drive.
Question 5: A question that certainly is very interesting for many OCZ users: What about the guarantee for older products? Toshiba acquired the company’s assets and not the liabilities, but we are pleased that the new organization is able to continue to support existing customers with current SSD products. This supports the vast majority of consumers and all enterprise customers as our top volume products like the Vertex, Vector SATA and RevoDrive PCIe SSDs all continue to be supported. The Agility Series is already on the tail end of the lifecycle and we are able to provide one more year of support for this series. All OCZ Storage Solutions products launched after the acquisition, as well as any future products, will come with warranty support.
Question 6: What happened with OCZs power supply segment? Toshiba only acquired the SSD assets from OCZ Technology and therefore a separate buyer had to be found for the power supply division. I am pleased that FirePower Technology purchased the PSU assets, plans to honor warranty obligations and has taken over the fantastic team we had as well.
For OCZ Storage Solutions, as you can tell by the new name already, this is an opportunity to put all focus and resources towards continuing to develop market leading storage solutions.
Question 7: Is OCZ extending its portfolio in future again to memory or USB drives for example? Or where is the direction going to? OCZ is now a fully integrated SSD provider and our focus will be to grow our SSD market share in the enterprise, OEM, SMB and consumer market.
We will continue to develop market leading hardware and software solutions, there are no plans to expand our portfolio to other product groups such as USB drives.
With OCZ Storage Solutions being part of the Toshiba Group, we will have the ability to earlier access to NAND which may enable us to expand into additional market segments.
Question 8: In recent months, SSD prices decreased steadily. But traditional HDDs still continues to be used as mass storage. When will this change and will the HDD become extinct? I believe HDDs will continue to exist as digital content continues to grow and HDDs are an inexpensive way to store the content. SSDs are experiencing extraordinary growth; just in 2013 the number of units shipped nearly doubled despite that the overall computer storage industry declined by 5%.
Combined shipments worldwide last year for the hard disk drives (HDD), solid-state drives (SSD) and optical disk drives (ODD) making up the computer storage market amounted to 755.0 million units, down from 794.0 million in 2012. While SSD shipments were up an outsize 82 percent to 57.0 million units, both the HDD and ODD segments proved to be a drag. The HDD segment fell 7 percent to 444.4 million units, and the ODD sector did worse with a 12 percent decline to 253.5 million units. (Data source: IHS)

Christoph Miklos ist nicht nur der „Papa“ von Game-/Hardwarezoom, sondern seit 1998 Technik- und Spiele-Journalist. In seiner Freizeit liest er DC-Comics (BATMAN!), spielt leidenschaftlich gerne World of Warcraft und schaut gerne Star Trek Serien.

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