Seagate is still under continued pressure from solid state drive manufacturers in the enterprise, where Flash-based storage is cost prohibitive but faster and more chic.
This need, plus caching of frequently accessed content will drive the requirements for flash memory storage as an important tier in enterprise storage infrastructures.
Intel announced a new SATA interface enterprise solid state drive (SSD) that uses 25 nm multi-level cell flash memory (this is 2 bit per cell technology referred to as MLC).
One driver for Seagate in the transaction is its move into NAND-Flash based products: the company is nearing the launch of a second-generation enterprise solid-state drive offering, and Luczo says a third-generation product under development jointly with Samsung should arrive in 2012.