Introduced in 2005, Serial Attached SCSI, or SAS, is well on its way to becoming the biggest-selling storage technology. IDC figures show that SAS is expected to account for over 50 per cent* of all enterprise drive shipments this year – rising to a commanding 70 per cent* market share by 2011. With parallel SCSI shipments dropping to less than 15 per cent, the opportunity to grow your sales by providing SAS solutions to your customers is only set to increase.

SAS delivers both the simplicity and economic advantages of SATA; replacing parallel SCSI as an interface and providing the flexibility, reliability and enhanced performance required by customers.

It also has many advantages over other technologies, allowing you to:

• Focus on matching the processing and storage needs of your customers – with fewer compromises due to interface limitations
• Mix SAS and SATA drives to optimise performance at the right price point
• Add additional storage to existing systems
• Prepare for the future with powerful scalability
• Reduce your customers' total cost of ownership of the final solution

The future is SAS

Fully backed by industry alliances and an agreed roadmap, the next milestone for SAS is the adoption of the 6GB interface in 2009, with plans for 12GB by 2012.

The benefits of a 6GB interface are more than just speed, with features including:

• Standard zoning – eliminating compatibility issues
• Decision Feedback Equalization (DFE) – ensuring more reliable links
• Longer cabling – up to 10m
• Any-port-to-any-port connectivity
• Spread Spectrum Clocking – reducing EMI emissions
• Self-configuring expanders

As a result, the 6GB SAS interface not only enables faster data rates, but also allows for the design of an end-to-end SAS storage solution that could compete with fibre channel storage systems.

SAS sales for all

You can rely on SAS drives from Seagate, the number-one enterprise drive manufacturer in the world. Our portfolio includes the Seagate® Cheetah® 15K.6 450GB drive, great for servers supporting email, internet, and business transaction processing. Savvio® drives suit rack and tower servers, blade servers and databases and the new Barracuda® ES.2, the only Nearline SAS drive, has features that can bring down the high cost of data centre deployments.

If you are not currently building servers or storage systems, now is the time to add SAS servers and storage systems to your product portfolio. Because the technology is relatively new to the channel distribution market and to system builders, you have room to compete with larger companies. Be first to deploy these systems and you can quickly become the subject matter expert in the market you serve.

* Source: IDC, 2007

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