Xyratex has over 25 years of research and development experience in disk drive development, storage systems and high-speed communication protocols. We have been first-to-market with several of our data storage subsystem and HDD test and process equipment products. By delivering innovative technical capability we complement our customers’ core competencies and objectives and, for SI products, we focus on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our customers’ production processes.
Our research and development activities are essential to ensure our products remain competitive both economically and technologically as the data storage industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
Our core technical expertise covers a number of disciplines:
• mechanical engineering; critical to ensure optimal performance of disk drives both during manufacturing processes and in data storage subsystems;
• high speed electronics and interfaces; including current and developing network and storage related data transfer protocols such as FCoE, iSCSI, FC-AL, Ethernet and SAS;
• electronic, optical and electro mechanical control systems;
• storage application processors; and,
• software focused on storage management, data protection, and advanced server and enclosure management.
We have consistently maintained over 25% of our employees in research and development during this period. These employees have an average of over 10 years of experience in research and development.
We have been able to significantly increase our investment in research and development projects in 2010 to enable us to take advantage of the opportunities we see to achieve growth in the longer term. These have been supported by three small acquisitions and associated product development teams. For example, in the Networked Storage Solutions division we are investing in Lustre file system software used in HPC applications. In the Storage Infrastructure division we are developing new products addressing the requirements of Head and Media Substrate manufacturing.
We carry out our research and development activities in Havant, United Kingdom; Heathrow, Florida; Fremont, California; Singapore; Seremban, Malaysia; and through an outsourced provider in Hyderabad, India.