OCZ, one of the biggest players in the solid state drive market, said during CeBIT that the company plans to focus its attention on pushing SSDs in the European market, paying particular attention to the enterprise sector.

"There are an increasing number of applications where SSDs are quickly replacing traditional hard drives, including mobile and high-performance computing as well as numerous enterprise environments," commented Alex Mei, CMO at the OCZ Technology Group. "At CeBIT 2010, OCZ continues to expand our robust SSD lineup with the introduction of next-generation solid state storage solutions in an increasingly wide array of interfaces that truly deliver transformational capabilities when addressing the unique challenges of enterprise clients."

Part of the process includes meeting the demand for PCI-Express and SCSI (SAS) SSDs. This includes both current options -- like the Z-Drive series, now being showcased in its fourth generation -- as well as upcoming parts.

If Alternate.de's listing is any indication (see here), OCZ is busy readying an update to its Vertex 2 SSD line, the Vertex 2 'Limited Edition'.

Fudzilla says the updated SSDs will be available in 100GB and 200GB capacities, but it's unknown whether the Limited Edition units will use the same SandForce controller as found on the Vertex 2 Pro. Either way, the upcoming drive sports some pretty impressive read and write speeds, with Fudzilla reporting reads to be in the vicinity of 250MB/s to 270MB/s, while writes will cruise along at 235MB/s.

Like most high-end SSDs, the Vertex 2 Limited Edition units aren't likely to come cheap. At the current exchange rate, Alternate.de has the 200GB model listed at roughly $1,237, or about $6.18 per gigabyte.

OCZ this week announced that enterprise solid state drive (SSD) provider WhipTail Technologies will tap into OCZ's "premium" SSDs for products and services the company offers.

"We are proud to support WhipTail with our enterprise class OEM SSD products," commented Ryan Petersen, CEO at the OCZ Technology Group. "WhipTail’s unique Racerunner solution takes full advantage of all the benefits of solid state drives to provide their customers with an exceptional storage appliance that gives their customers a competitive advantage."

WhipTail will use OCZ's SSDs to configure its Racerunner SSD appliances, which consists of a proprietary software stack and are touted as the "fastest flash-based appliances currently on the market."

No monetary terms of the deal were announced.

There's no way around it - if SSDs are to eventually replace mechanical hard drives, manufacturers have to find a way to increase capacity at a reasonable cost. So far, every SSD vendor has failed on both accounts, which is why we're excited to see OCZ release a 1TB SSD.

Also available in the more traditional 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities, the new Colossus 3.5-inch SSD series brings no-holds barred performance to the scene, at least on paper. According to OCZ, each drive is capable of up to 260MB/s reads and writes, up to 220MB/s sustained writes, and up to 14,000 IOPS. That puts the Colossus right up there with the fastest spec'd drives on the market.

"The new Colossus Series is designed to boost desktop and workstation performance and is for high power users tht put a premium on speed, reliability, and maximum storage capacity," said Eugene Chang, VP of Product Management at OCZ. "The Colossus core-architecture is also available to enterprise clients with locked BOMs (build of materials) and customized firmware to match their unique applications."

A 1TB drive certainly makes headway on the capacity front, but the question is, how much will it cost? OCZ didn't say, though previous reports had the then-upcoming drive pegged at $2,500. Ouch.