Crucial Memory talks up SSD opportunity

Micron-owned vendor claims Thai floods, economic downturn and performance gains are fuelling the demand for its solid state storage technology

Storage vendor Crucial Memory wants to capitalise on the growing interest in solid state disk (SSD) drives to recruit more partners and wrest market share from its rivals.

The UK-based firm is owned by OEM DRAM manufacturer Micron and is pitching its products as an alternative to those offered by rival storage player Kingston Technology.

Speaking to ChannelWeb, Saul Matthews, global channel marketing director at Crucial, said the company's aim is to become a "credible number two vendor" behind Kingston.

"There are a number of partners out there that genuinely need a reliable second vendor," said Matthews. "Our aim is to compete, but also complement what it is [Kingston] does."

The company has been on a channel recruitment drive for the past 18 months and claims to have more than 1,000 partners in the UK selling its products.

"The channel has been a major focus of the company's for the past 18 months, and we still are actively recruiting partners in the UK and Europe," said Matthews.

Having the backing of the Micron brand, whose products Crucial claims are used in a quarter of all desktop devices, has helped lure partners keen to tap into the growing demand for SSD, the vendor believes.

The floods in Thailand, which have caused well-documented hard disk drive (HDD) supply problems in recent months, have fuelled some of this demand, Matthews added.

"The Thai floods prompted a scramble for SSD products, but there are other reasons why SSD is becoming more popular," he said. "SSD [drives] do not fail and, from a performance point of view, they are superior to HDD. They also use less power and expel less heat."

The economic downturn has also reportedly played its part, as companies shun new hardware purchases and opt for system upgrades instead.

"The demand for SSD has been growing year on year, even though the price per gigabyte is more expensive than HDD, because the benefits of using the technology are so clear," concluded Matthews.