STA Sees Strong SAS Market Ahead

San Francisco, November 13, 2006 — The SCSI Trade Association (STA), a member-run industry association, established to support and to promote SCSI technology, sees the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) market achieving the level promised two years ago. To date, about half of STA member companies have introduced in excess of 75 SAS products to the market, providing all of the components and sub-systems, as well as the features and speeds required by system integrators and OEMs to build SAS-based storage systems.

For three years prior to the introduction of the first components in 2004, SAS technology was in the definition, development and standardization phase. A fundamental aim from the beginning has been to make SAS and SATA drives compatible in a common industry standard infrastructure. As a result, SAS and SATA compatibility and technology advances paved the way for the broad adoption of SAS within the enterprise storage market.

Harry Mason, Director of Industry Marketing, LSI Logic, and President, SCSI Trade Association, stated, “STA could not be more pleased with the positive development of the SAS market. It is decidedly robust and SAS’ use as an industry standard building block for a broad range of storage solutions is well underway. As predicted, the market is making an orderly transition from Parallel SCSI to SAS as the mainstream server storage interface of choice. It is having an equally impressive impact on how nearline and NAS storage solutions are being deployed. Because of the power, size and functional demands placed on standard high-volume servers, SAS is leading the market transition to small form factor (2.5″) enterprise-class drives.”

John Monroe, Research VP, Storage Markets, Gartner Dataquest, commented, “STA and various infrastructure vendors have executed cleanly, preparing a fertile ground for rapid deployment of diverse SAS configurations in servers and storage networks. SAS has already proven its worthiness as the legitimate heir to SCSI, with enhanced feature sets that broaden its competitive range of integration options. In midyear 2005, with the delivery of next-generation server chipsets, adoption rates for new Small Form Factor (SFF) enterprise drives with SAS interfaces quickly accelerated. Despite incursions from SATA at the low end and Fibre Channel at the high end, SAS will become the dominant multi-user hard disc drive interface, with an approximate 45 percent share in 2009 and 2010.”

Compatibility between SAS and SATA technology has proven to be a catalyst for the rapid adoption of SAS. Large numbers of SAS or SATA drives can be deployed in an industry-standard system, built around a SAS backbone. The SAS/SATA technology mix appeals to a large segment of the industry, as it gives customers the choice of large capacity drives (at a very low cost), or very high performance drives – using a common infrastructure to serve both needs.

SAS also counteracts problems such as heat dissipation and the tangle of ribbon cables and large connectors within servers and storage enclosures. Serial technology has the advantage of speed and the smaller cables and connectors have been a boon to OEMs and system integrators. It also makes it possible for new SAS users to start with SATA drives and later upgrade to SAS drives on a “pay as you go” basis.

About STA
The SCSI Trade Association was established in 1995 to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of SCSI to the industry. STA promotes the understanding and use of SCSI technology and influences the evolution of SCSI standards to meet future industry needs. The Association has a nine-member Board of Directors that oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees and all STA activities. To subscribe to Serial Storage Wire, STA’s free Serial Attached SCSI newsletter, please visit: www.serialstoragewire.com. For more information, please visit the STA web site at http://www.scsita.org, send an email to info@scsita.org or call the STA office at 415-561-6273.

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