LSI Looks Ahead

NEW YORK -- Component specialist LSI attempted to put its recent problems behind it today, outlining plans for new products tied to Solid State Disk (SSD), 10-Gbit/s Ethernet, and drive-level encryption at its annual analyst event. (See CEO Talks of 'Refounding' LSI and LSI Announces Board Changes.)

The semiconductor and storage systems vendor has had to weather a financial storm in recent quarters, absorbing blows from mergers, weakness in its networking business, and a slowdown in IT spending. (See LSI Promises Better, LSI Completes Agere Merger, LSI Reports Q2 Results, LSI Earnings Exceed Guidance, and LSI Announces Board Changes.)

LSI execs at this morning's meeting gave a peek into the firm's product roadmap, joining the growing number of vendors looking to exploit Solid State Disk (SSD) technology. (See Solid Data, Solid State for Small Biz, In-Stat Says SSDs on Way, and IDC: SSDs to Go Mainstream.) "We see SSDs becoming part of the enterprise storage arena at some point in time," said Jeff Richardson, executive vice president of LSI's networking and storage products group.

The exec explained that LSI is currently building a data management technology encompassing both SSD and traditional magnetic disk technology. "We're developing RAID technologies to address both these media in a common environment."

Although he did not go into specific details, the technology is likely to come from LSI's recent acquisition of storage management and virtualization specialist StoreAge. (See LSI Annexes StoreAge, LSI Buys StoreAge, and LSI Sniffs Out StoreAge.)