Murphy is among those who predict a spurt of growth in SATA components and products this year, as companies start to glom on to the new solutions. By the end of 2004, she thinks 80 percent of ATA drive sales will be for SATA, as opposed to its predecessor, parallel ATA. She also sees a growing demand for controllers that combine SATA with iSCSI for higher-end storage equipment.
For the moment, though, the biggest opportunity for SATA is in the low end, sources say -- in equipping network servers and departmental workstations with fast, high-capacity SATA drives. Among the companies with this view is Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT).
Charles Stevens, corporate VP of Microsoft's Enterprise Storage Division, told Byte and Switch in an inteview this week that "Everything is overshadowed by new fast disk technology." Consolidation of server databases and filing systems will lead to new NAS and SAN gear for departmental use, he says. The availability of fast local storage is one reason Microsoft got into the storage space, he maintains.
None of this means SCSI is going away. SATA controllers generally don't handle huge amounts of drives (12 seems to be the high end, available from 3ware, for one), and the addition of RAID cuts available storage space in half. "Performance and reliability are still better in SCSI," says Linus Wong, director of strategic marketing for Adaptec's Storage Solutions Group. But he too sees the SATA ship coming in: "We see 2004 as a transition year from parallel to serial ATA in sub-entry or low-end network servers."
Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch
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