Next Generation Storage System Developed

Asia-Pacific Business and Technology Report was able to sit down with Cho Byung-cheol, CEO of Taejin Infotech Co., and discuss his company’s latest developments in high-speed data storage systems. For the past 14 years, Taejin Infotech has been developing new solutions in the area of semiconduc- tor memory systems and business solutions. Now, they have something that might significantly change most computing environments – Ed.

Question: Mr. Cho Byung-cheol, can you please give a brief introduction about your company?

Answer: I started my company in 1996 providing business software solutions such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Those software solutions were the profit generators for our company in the beginning. While we were working on these solutions, we were aware of a gap in storage technology. We noticed that several applications were not able to run due to slow storage devices such as DSAD . So we took the revenue from those profit generation schemes and started developing SSD technology. We have made some good revenue so far, enough to open branch offices in Indonesia and China, and expand our business in China significantly.

Q: So you’re not getting into the SSD solution business?

A: Yes. We started selling a basic SSD solution in 2007, and this product has gone out to over 100 different companies worldwide so far. But now, this silicon-based SSD solution we have begun selling early this year. We have just finished filing all patents for this solution in Korea, and we also have ten patents for this technology in the U.S. We have also begun selling this solution in China, Taiwan, and India.

Q: Can you explain a little more about what the silicon-based SSD solution is?

A: Well, as you may already be aware, most of today’s computer-intensive services require a large amount of storage space. Whether a company is offering e-mail services, business data storage, Web servers, or cloud computing services, it all requires a tremendous amount of data storage. And today’s data storage infrastructure is very complex, creating challenges in fundamental areas such as heat dissipation and power consumption. The management of a reliable data storage environment can be difficult. But our solution, the Silicon Storage Device, or SSD , is 250 times faster, uses less electricity, generates less heat, and is physically smaller than existing solutions. It is therefore cheaper and more reliable. It is simply an improvement in all aspects from traditional data storage equipment.

Technically speaking, it is a melding of the very best of DD R RAM with solid state flash drives. Reading speeds on solid state drives are very fast, but writing speeds are much slower. The very large amount of RAM provides a large buffer that works in tandem with the solid state drives, giving them their huge speed boost and power savings.

Q: And this was originally developed by your company? How did you come up with this?

A: We got the idea of faster storage while working with ERP solutions. Because when you work with this type of software, you know that there are many different operations that require high-speed memory. That’s where I got the idea to develop the Silicon Storage Device. It uses silicon-based memory, instead of using a regular hard drive, and the speed is there.

Now I have the vision of delivering large amounts of data faster, and how mnay applications that will have. When you deliver very high quality media through broadband, it requires faster storage devices than what is currently on the market. When you do that with video on demand, or movies on demand, you need to have a bigger and faster server for storage, so you can stream out that data so much faster. With a faster storage device you can handle more streams per server because you already have the capability to serve up that much data that fast. I saw the market opportunity for media streaming in early 2003. I knew that fast memory and storage is going to be needed to handle the media. I turned out to be right, and today you have cell phones, and iPad devices, and the iPhone, which are all using video delivery systems. But the current technology of hard drives cannot handle streaming data as fast as the devices demand it. But the Silicon Storage Devices will allow businesses to handle more streams of data with a smaller footprint. I saw that a smaller footprint storage device that uses less energy is crucial for the future development of the data industry. Our energy-efficient solution is exactly what the industry needs.

Q: So what kinds of applications will super-fast data storage have?

A: Well the first applications that come to mind are medical simulations, video on demand, IPT V, and basically any small devices that contain huge and fast storage. That’s the general idea. This enables you to do the business that wasn’t possible for you before, years ago. For instance, when you do satellite video surveillance, you have live video from the satellite that is coming when you’re taking a picture. If you want to do real-time analysis on the data that is being stored, you need fast storage in order to accommodate all the operations you’re trying to do to that data. Today real-time analysis on satellite data is simply not possible. But my company’s technology allows you to do that. Some other applications are automated visual inspection systems, molecular simulations, or earthquake simulation systems. Or coordinating real-time sonar exploration when searching for oil. You can have exploration ships that all use sonar to find out where oil is. Right now you can analyze the sonar data from one ship in real-time, but you can’t do that with ten ships coordinated together. Once you get that much data coming in, it becomes too much for current technology. But the Silicon Storage Device will allow you to perform operations on that data while its being Also, 3D imaging needs this type of super-fast storage. Right now, 3D body images, such as in a CAT scan, take a very long time to coordinate.

Also, 3D transmission of digital TV requires twice the amount of information to be sent as regular 2D. This huge amount of threedimensional information must be read and written fast enough to be viable, and our silicon storage devices can do that.

On a less serious note, virtual reality games can also benefit from this. Currently, in games like Second Life, you can’t walk through the world in real-time, because the data about all the objects in the world comes to your computer too slowly. This is partly because of your Internet connection, but also because of the hard drive storage. Its just not fast enough. A faster storage system on both the server and client end can take care of those problems.

Q: Which market are you hoping to aim for first?

A: Our SSD technology is a homegrown Korean technology. This is Korea’s first storage system product. And therefore, right now we are concentrating on China and Korea, but later this year we will be going into the U.S. market. And after that, we will try to enter Europe.

Q: The Korean market is easy to understand, because you are a Korean company, but why China next after that?

A: Based on our market intelligence, Korean IT companies and skills are better than the Chinese. So, Chinese companies are often looking to Korean companies to provide IT services. Our company already has a presence in the Chinese market providing those services. Furthermore, we think that the Chinese market is moving very fast, especially in the high tech area, so we want to make sure that we have this business in China covered. Thirdly, the Chinese market is several times bigger than Korea, and much more profitable. It is about twenty times larger than the Korean market.

Q: But why China before the U.S.? Or India? Or even another market?

I really want to get involved in the U.S. market, but it takes a lot of expertise to get into that market. We are a Korean company, so in order to get into the U.S. we need some guidance from people who are familiar with the U.S. market. Once we do get into the U.S. market, I am confident that the technology will carry us to success. But we need help from professionals first to make sure that our company is presented in a sophisticated and U.S.-oriented manner in order to give the right impression.

Q: What are your business expectations and goals about this new technology?

A: We expect that once we get into the U.S. and European market, the company will explode. We fully expect to become a billion dollar company. So we are moving forward with getting an office in the U.S. which will do an IPO sometime later this year or next year. We have enough revenue, but we could always use a little more along with a little more exposure to the outside. I’m a technical guy myself, so I have to delegate these business decisions to my management team.