Pliant Technology Joins Leading Tech Organizations To Establish New Solid State Storage Initiative

Pliant Technology, developer of Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs), a new class of high-performance solid state storage devices for the enterprise, recently announced that it has joined with leading IT organizations from the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to form the new Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI).

The SSSI www.snia.org/sssi is a collective initiative of storage and IT industry leaders committed to becoming the recognized authority on storage made from non-volatile, solid state memory devices, and to promote the value and benefits of solid state storage technology for a range of consumer and enterprise applications. The SSSI's mission is to coordinate and conduct education efforts for vendor and user communities, perform market outreach highlighting the virtues of solid state storage, and further the development of solid-state technology standards and specifications.

"There has been a lot of commentary in the industry about solid state disk (SSD) technology over the past year, however, it's fair to say that many IT managers do not fully understand the significant value and benefits the technology offers," said Amyl Ahola, CEO, Pliant Technology. "We look forward to working with the other members of the SSSI to correct some of the misconceptions about the technology, to establish clear standards that differentiate enterprise and consumer level SSD products, and to help CIO-level executives formulate plans so they can enable their organizations to realize the performance, reliability and cost-savings benefits of this technology."

Pliant's new Enterprise Flash Drive storage devices are designed to address the performance limitations of traditional hard drive technologies in data-I/O intensive enterprise computing environments. Pliant's EFDs, which are based on a new and advanced hardware and software architecture, will deliver breakthrough improvements over today's highest performing hard drive and SSD solutions, while meeting the growing need for increased energy efficiency and reliability in enterprise computing environments.

In addition to Pliant, other founding members of the SSSI include: Intel Corporation, Dell, Microsoft Corp., SanDisk Corporation, Seagate Technology, EMC Corporation, HP, IBM, Enterprise Strategy Group, Sun Microsystems, Hitachi Data Systems, NetApp, LSI Corporation, PMC-Sierra, Xiotech Corporation, STEC, Inc., QLogic Corporation, Coughlin Associates, Inc., the University of Virginia, Emulex Corporation, BiTMICRO Networks, SiliconSystems, Adtron Corporation, a subsidiary of SMART Modular Technologies, Calypso Systems, Inc., Fusion-io, Mtron Storage Technology, Patni Computer Systems, Ltd, and Texas Memory Systems.

Pliant is also a member of SNIA's Green Storage Initiative (GSI). The GSI is dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and conservation in all networked storage technologies in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of data storage operations. For more information on the SNIA Green Storage Initiative, please visit www.snia.org/green.

About the SNIA
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not–for–profit global organization, made up of some 400 member companies and 7,000 individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA's mission is to lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For additional information, visit the SNIA web site at www.snia.org.

About Pliant Technology
Pliant Technology is developing Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs), a new class of solid state storage devices that integrate seamlessly into enterprise information systems and dramatically improve performance, reliability, energy efficiency, and TCO. Delivering breakthrough improvements over today's highest performing hard drive and SSD storage solutions for a range of data I/O intensive enterprise applications, Pliant's solution is expected to be available to OEM and datacenter customers in the fourth quarter of 2008. The company was founded by a team of successful storage executives and engineers from Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, and Seagate. Pliant is based in Milpitas, Calif. More information is available at www.plianttechnology.com.

SOURCE: Pliant Technology