Intel announced a partnership with Hitachi through which the company’s forthcoming line of high-end solid-state computer drives will only be supplied by Intel. The new products will be developed for computer servers and storage systems and the costs demanded by the research and development processes will be equally covered by the two companies.

Even though the solution involving solid state drives is significantly more expensive, Hitachi hopes that the improved performances delivered by the product to be appreciated by the corporate customers and quickly turn the new release into a massive success. It is well known that SSDs work faster and are more energy efficient that the traditional spinning disk drives. Hitachi’s officials stated that their business will focus on the corporate business and will not follow its rivals which target laptop PCs and other such consumer-based applications.

Still, the company will also continue with its hard drive deliveries, as it is considered that the general demand will keep on growing for applications that demand large data storage.

"We understand the needs of today's enterprise customers and are committed to delivering breakthrough products that increase their data center performance and reduce total cost of ownership," explained Shinjiro Iwata, executive vice president of strategic business operations at Hitachi GST, in a recent statement. "By expanding our product line-up to include both traditional enterprise hard drives and new SSDs, Hitachi GST will continue to provide customers with a proven set of products tailored to meet the high-performance, high-reliability requirements of today's data center," he added.

“We believe this combination spreads out the risk and gives the venture the highest probability for success,” said Troy Winslow, a director of marketing at Intel.

The deal between the two represents a long term commitment, as the first drive will only be released in 2010.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was formed in 2003 after Hitachi acquired I.B.M.’s storage business, is the third-largest seller of hard disk drives, trailing behind Seagate Technology and Western Digital. Seagate is the world’s number one hard disk manufacturer and has already announced its intentions for 2009 to release a brand new supply of SSDs. Western Digital also stated that its plans include the switch to the SSD technology.

The competition is tough and will only get bigger, as each one of the players involved will attempt to come out with a more attractive offer than its competitors. For starters, the ones releasing their products in 2009 will an advantage, but on the long run, Hitachi will be able to study their offer and prepare its release in such a manner that will exceed the competition’s, whether it is going to be the quality, the price or both.

"The new solid-state drives for the enterprise include a number of architectural breakthroughs and improve performance and energy usage models that will change enterprise computing. Intel and Hitachi GST share a common objective in delivering SAS/FC products based on solid-state technology that will help enterprise customers meet the skyrocketing demands for performance while reducing space, power and cooling costs," explained Randy Wilhelm, Intel’s VP and GM for NAND solutions.