Pliant’s new flash drive line aims to cut energy costs 80%

Milpitas, Calif.-based Pliant Technology unveiled its first family of flash drive products today that is expected to reduce energy use in storage and IT systems. 

The company’s Vice President of Marketing Greg Goelz told the Cleantech Group that the new products offer a hybrid approach, combining hard disk drives (HDD) with the company’s enterprise flash drives (EFD). Pliant's technology replaces HDD-only systems.

The company's high-performance flash drives, which use flash memory such as that in a USB (Universal Serial Bus) stick, have no moving parts. Pliant has mixed them with traditional rotating drives, which are constantly spinning 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and are considered to be large energy consumers.

Still by taking a hybrid approach, Pliant says its branded Lightning EFDs, when used with HDDs, require nearly 80 percent less power to operate and cool when integrated into existing enterprise storage and server systems. 

In 2007, total data center power and electricity consumption for the world was estimated to cost $7.2 billion annually (see Data centers: $7B in annual energy costs).

“The overall design is more reliable in terms of how we manage the data,” he said.

The products help to improve performance and reliability of storage and IT systems, reduce costs, and lessen space requirements of HDDs, according to the company. 

Goelz said the products could benefit IT managers and system architects at enterprise data centers, financial services organizations, high-performance computing environments, and digital media applications.

“There’s a tremendous pent up demand in the marketplace,” Goelz said.

Other companies such as Milpitas, Calif.-based Adaptec (Nasdaq:ADPT) have been working on hardware and software for the data storage industry, with products to help manage power use. In June, Adaptec launched its new Series 5Z RAID family of controllers, which it said eliminates the need for lithium-ion batteries in data centers (see Adaptec’s new controller bids goodbye to Li-ion batteries).

Pliant’s new products are aimed at the $30 billion global storage market. Goelz said analysts have predicted that the company’s class of product is likely to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2012.

He said the unneeded HDDs replaced by Pliant’s products can be redeployed within a company for other uses, rather than disposing of them.

Companies such as Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based XsunX (OTC:XSNX) are looking for new uses of HDDs. The company said it is investigating using HDDs to mass produce high-efficiency, low-cost solar cells, using thin-film copper indium gallium (di) selenide (CIGS) technology, which could have applications in the building-integrated photovoltaic market (see XsunX reboots, claims 75% cost savings with new CIGS solar push).

Pliant—founded three and a half years ago by enterprise storage veterans with HDD selling experience—has been focused on coming up with a better way to deliver energy and performance requirements. The company currently has 35 employees.

Its new line of products is being delivered for original equipment manufacturer evaluation and qualification, and is expected to be available through channel partners this month.

“We’ve been working since the fourth quarter of last year with major systems partners, and we know [the product] behaves the way we expected it to behave,” he said.

Goelz said announcements from confirmed customers are expected to follow in the fourth quarter.

A 2009 report from market research firm IDC authored by David Reinsel about the power and cooling issues related to enterprise storage technologies indicates that the cost to power and cool the world’s installed base of external enterprise storage is expected to increase from $1.3 billion in 2007 to $2.6 billion in 2011.

In 2007, nearly 43 million spinning disk drives were used worldwide, compared to a projected 78 million in 2011, according to the report. The equipment also contributed to just under 15 billion pounds of carbon dioxide in 2007, and a projected 22 billion 2011.

Venture-backed Pliant has raised more than $27 million to date. The company closed a $15 million Series C round in March to be used for working capital to support its volume production ramp-up of its EFD products.

Investors included new backer Menlo Ventures, as well as existing firms Lightspeed Venture Partners, Arcturus Capital, and Divergent Ventures. Goelz said Pliant is currently bringing in revenue, although he wouldn’t disclose how much.