NEWARK, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/08/13 -- SMART Storage Systems, an innovative enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) technology provider, today announced that the company has extended its CloudSpeed product line with the introduction of two new drives, the CloudSpeed 1000 and CloudSpeed 1000E. While leveraging cost-effective 19nm consumer-grade multi-level cell (MLC) Flash and enhancing its base endurance with SMART Storage Systems award winning Guardian™ Technology Platform, the new CloudSpeed SSDs deliver up to 5x better endurance than competing MLC-based SSDs, resulting in the lowest cost per terabyte written (TBW) in the industry. This enables enterprise customers to better control their storage total cost of ownership (TCO).

"By 2017, SSD prices will fall 35 percent annually, but the reliability of the Flash used will decline nearly 30 percent(1)," according to a recent Gartner conference presentation. The anticipated drop in Flash reliability poses as a significant challenge in the enterprise market as SSD manufacturers further leverage MLC Flash to meet cost reduction goals, while real-time applications and cloud computing services increase the amount of data being written to drives. Until today, data center managers frequently deployed SSDs leveraging consumer-grade MLC Flash to provide the performance required at a low price-per-gigabyte. However, SSDs that leverage standard, non-endurance enhanced consumer-grade MLC Flash wear-out quickly in enterprise environments. This results in storage TCO skyrocketing as organizations need to replace SSDs multiple times during the warranty period.

"Our CloudSpeed product line gives OEMs and enterprise organizations the best of both worlds; a low acquisition cost and high endurance. This combination results in the absolute lowest TCO over a five year period," stated John Scaramuzzo, president at SMART Storage Systems.

Leveraging the Guardian Technology Platform, a proprietary suite of enterprise features and enterprise-class endurance enhancement technologies, the new CloudSpeed 1000 and CloudSpeed 1000E SSDs deliver industry-leading endurance from 19nm consumer-grade MLC Flash, reaching 3,070TBW and 7,680TBW respectively. This allows organizations to extend the working life of their storage and avoid the need to constantly rip-and-replace SSDs.

The new CloudSpeed SSDs utilize a Serial ATA (SATA) 6 Gb/s interface to deliver up to 500/450MB/s sustained read/write performance and up to 80K/35K random IOPS using the test methodology defined by the Storage Networking Industry Alliance's (SNIA) Solid State Storage Enterprise Test Specification, with consistent performance throughout the five year warranty. In addition, the new CloudSpeed SSDs come equipped with a full line of enterprise features, including SMART Storage Systems' third generation backup power circuit technology, full data path protection, data fail recovery, thermal monitoring and AES 256-bit encryption. The CloudSpeed 1000 is available in capacities ranging from 120 - 960GB, while the extended endurance CloudSpeed 1000E is available in capacities from 100 - 800GB.

The CloudSpeed 1000 and CloudSpeed 1000E will begin sampling to select customers at the end of Q1 2013. For more information on the CloudSpeed 1000 and CloudSpeed 1000E, please visit http://www.smartstoragesys.com, the company's blog at http://www.smartstorageblog.com, find us on Twitter under the handle @SMARTSSD, or connect with us on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/smart-storage-systems.

About SMART Storage Systems
SMART Storage Systems is a technology leader in the design, development and deployment of current and next-generation enterprise solid-state storage products. Combining leading-edge, enterprise-class design and proven world-class support, SMART Storage Systems leverages its deep expertise in Flash and enterprise storage technology. SMART Storage Systems delivers high-quality, high-reliability solutions to a broad customer base including tier one storage and server OEMs. In support of these designs, SMART Storage Systems provides award-winning innovations in solid-state storage technology, such as NAND high-endurance Guardian™ technology, to a variety of customers in the enterprise storage, enterprise server, data center, defense and industrial markets. SMART Storage Systems is part of the SMART family of global companies. See www.smartstoragesys.com for more information.

About SMART Worldwide Holdings
The SMART family of global companies are leading designers, manufacturers and suppliers of electronic subsystems for the most demanding OEMs around the world. The SMART companies have led the way over the past 23 years providing standard and custom products to today's leading global OEMs crossing all major electronic industries. These industries include PC, enterprise and industrial servers, networking, telecom, defense, aerospace, gaming and embedded application markets. Taking innovations from the design stage through manufacturing and delivery, SMART Modular Technologies has developed a comprehensive memory product line that includes DRAM, SRAM and Flash memory in various form factors. SMART Storage Systems offers high-performance, high-capacity SSDs for enterprise storage, enterprise server, data center, defense, aerospace, industrial automation, medical and transportation markets. SMART's presence in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America enables it to provide its customers with proven expertise in international logistics, asset management and supply-chain management worldwide. See www.smartm.com for more information.

(1) Gartner Data Center Conference Presentation, Understanding Application Workloads Is Understanding SSDs, Joseph Unsworth, December 3 - 6, 2012