Storage Notes: SanDisk, Seagate, Western Digital Refresh Product Lines Targeting Enterprise Customers

September 18th, 2015 · by Trefis Team
WDCYTD+107.1%SPYYTD+13.8%QQQYTD+18.8%
Analyze WDC →

Storage companies – including SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) and  Seagate  (NASDAQ:STX) – have refreshed their product lines this quarter, targeting various segments of the enterprise and consumer markets. SanDisk introduced enterprise SSD drives for cloud storage in late August, announced caching support data service for VMware’s (NYSE:VMW) flagship product vSphere and partnered with Nexenta Systems to offer all-flash storage arrays with software-defined storage capabilities. Seagate announced its intention to roll out Helium-filled hard drives to compete with Western Digital in the enterprise storage market segment. Western Digital enhanced its product offerings to include 6TB variants of desktop hard drives and enterprise-grade hard drives. The company also partnered with 20th Century Fox for a new range of hard drives designed specifically to store ultra high-definition content on smart televisions.

SanDisk and Seagate’s stock prices have fallen by about 6-8% in the last month, while Western Digital’s stock fell by over 3% in the same period. Comparatively, the NASDAQ-100 and S&P-500 indices fell by about 4-5% in the same period. Here’s a quick roundup on the developments in storage industry.

Seagate Technology

Seagate has witnessed limited growth in enterprise-grade hard drive shipments over the last few years, which is partially attributable to the increasing mix of solid state drives (SSD) in use. As a result, it is imperative for hard drive manufacturers to consistently provide high-performance enterprise-grade hard drives at cheaper rates to compete with flash storage. In terms of providing cheaper alternates to SSDs, Seagate introduced shingled magnetic recording (SMR), laser-assisted hard disk drive or heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) drives and its Kinetic Open Storage Platform with hard drives connected via ethernet cables over the last couple of years. The company questioned the viability of Helium-filled drives initially, citing that hermetically sealing the Helium gas inside the drives and preventing any kind of leakages was a huge challenge. [1] More recently, Seagate announced that the company was working towards unveiling its Helium-filled drives as a cost effective alternative to solid-state drives targeted for ultra-dense computing environments. The company is just months away from shipping these drives. [2]

See Our Full Analysis For Seagate Technology

[trefis_slideshow ticker=”STX” rhs=”3″]

Western Digital Corporation

Western Digital announced the introduction of WD Red Pro drives in capacities of up to 6TB in late august. [3] The network-attached storage (NAS) drives have a high data transfer speed and additional firmware for data transfer over networks. WD sells NAS drives in three variations – WD Red, WD Red Pro and WD Re. The WD Red Pro series is the more high-end product in this segment for Western Digital.

Western Digital also upgraded its WD Black range of desktop drives to a 6 terabyte capacity targeting its consumer segment. [4] The 3.5″ form factor hard drives spin at 7,200 RPM – higher than the standard 5,400 RPM – and are ideal for gamers and professional users that require high performance work stations. Additionally, Western Digital partnered with 20th Century Fox to introduce the My Passport Cinema 4K Ultra hard drive (UHD) for storing and organizing high-definition movies and viewing them on Samsung (PINK:SSNLF) Smart TVs and other VIDITY-enabled devices. [5]

See our full analysis for Western Digital

[trefis_slideshow ticker=”WDC” rhs=”3″]

SanDisk Corporation

SanDisk has a tough period for product sales this year. The company has witnessed a massive 55% y-o-y decline in client SSD sales to $308 million so far this year. Similarly, embedded storage (-6%), removable storage (-16%) and components and wafers revenues (-18%) have also faced substantial, but comparatively modest, revenue declines in the first half of the year. However, enterprise SSD sales rose by 64% on a y-o-y basis to $360 million in the same period. SanDisk has continued to focus on its enterprise storage segment in Q3 as well, with multiple product releases targeted for the coming quarters. The company released the new 2.5″ form factor CloudSpeed Ultra Gen II SSD for cloud service provider and software-defined storage vendor environments. The price per unit performance for the CloudSpeed Ultra Gen II SSD stands at 4 cents per input/output per second (IOPS), while competing SATA hard drives can cost as high as $3.50 per IOPS. [6] Additionally, the company announced an agreement with software-defined storage (SDS) solutions provider Nexenta Systems with an emphasis on open source-driven storage solutions. SanDisk’s all-flash InfiniFlash IF 100 storage array will be available with NexentaStor OpenSDS software platform. The integrated platform is ideal for data centers helping Big Data challenges including virtualization, scaling up, data analytics.

  • Trefis has a $66 price estimate for SanDisk’s shares, translating into a $13.6 billion market cap. This is about 20% higher than the current market price, which fluctuated between $54 and $57 during the week.

See our full analysis for SanDisk

[trefis_slideshow ticker=”SNDK” rhs=”3″]

View Interactive Institutional Research (Powered by Trefis):
Global Large Cap | U.S. Mid & Small Cap | European Large & Mid Cap
More Trefis Research

Notes:
  1. Seagate Doubt’s Viability Of Helium-Filled Drives, XBit Labs, December 2012 [↩]
  2. Damn well knew it! Seagate has helium drives in its labs, The Register, September 2015 [↩]
  3. WD Red Pro Drives Now Available In 6 TB, Western Digital Press Release, August 2015 [↩]
  4. WD Expands Its Performance Level Desktop Hard Drives to 6 TB Capacity, Western Digital Press Release, August 2015 [↩]
  5. WD Delivers Ultra HD Movie Content for New Generation of Samsung TVs, Western Digital Press Release, August 2015 [↩]
  6. SanDisk CloudSpeed Ultra Gen. II SATA SSD Announced, Storage Review, August 2015 [↩]
Invest with Trefis →More Ideas →