Who is winning the enterprise storage battle?

Enterprise storage is data storage designed for large-scale, high-tech companies. In the information technology field, storage devices play a significant role. They are a must for online storage, backups, archiving and disaster recovery. Many see more than $8.1 billion a year total storage industry market growing more than eight percent a year. According to Morningstar, disc-drive makers Western Digital and Seagate Technology controls more than 85 percent of the hard-drive manufacturing market. But don’t forget the competition coming from SanDisk, Micron and many others.

Many think that the long-term outlook for storage devices is excellent. They also think that there is more room to grow. Western Digital, the industry leader of disk-drives, is getting into making more enterprise drives that holds mega data. It recently introduced sealed, helium-filled drives that cater to multi platforms. Western Digital recently bought Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and won the approval of the Chinese government for the purchase. Seagate uses air in their similar competitive storage devices.

In the long-run, flash drives seems to save more power compared to disc-drives. In the field of flash storage, Intel, Micron Technology, Samsung, SanDisk, and Toshiba are the five most important manufacturers. However, flash is more expensive compared to disk-drives.