Fujitsu Extends Hard-Drive Line

Fujitsu Computer Products of America

The form factor will be significant in the notebook and thin-desktop marketplace--not only because of its size, but because it will address the evolving power consumption requirements of Intel microprocessor design, said Lorne Wilson, vice president of channel sales and marketing at Fujitsu, San Jose, Calif.

"This is the most important interface standard in the last five years," Wilson said.

Fujitsu made a conscious move to focus on the mobile and enterprise storage markets about 18 months ago and is placing a huge bet on the serial ATA format. Since that time, Wilson said the company has increased its share of channel shipments significantly, even as it has advanced to the No. 2 position in the market, as calculated by research firm Gartner Dataquest. Current, Fujitsu SCSI products account for more than 14 percent of all SCSC enterprise drives shipped through the channel, he said during a meeting here at Breakaway XChange.

The company's goal is to make sure that its share of units shipped through solution providers is roughly equivalent to its worldwide share of shipments in a given product category, Wilson said.

Fujitsu used the conference as a venue to show off its next generation of 3.5-inch form factor SCSI drives. Both series support Ultra320 SCSI, which operates at 320 Mbytes per second, while the MAP drives also support a 2-Gbyte FC-AL2 interface.

The new Fujitsu MAP and MAS series support spindle speeds of 10K RPM and 15K RMP, respectively. Capacities for the three MAP models are 36 Gbytes, 73 Gbytes and 147 Gbytes; capacities for the MAS models are 18 Gbytes, 36 Gbytes and 73 Gbytes.