Toshiba Revamps OCZ Brand
by Billy Tallis on May 25, 2016 8:00 AM EST
Over the past few months, Toshiba has started fully assimilating & integrating OCZ, the SSD business they acquired from bankruptcy in 2014. Rather than just absorb OCZ's SSD-related assets like the Indilinx SSD controllers, Toshiba kept the business relatively intact as the independently operated subsidiary OCZ Storage Solutions. The existing product lines were updated to use Toshiba NAND and OCZ drives accounted for the bulk of Toshiba's retail and consumer SSD presence.
Last year, the OCZ Trion 100 marked a shift in strategy as a Toshiba-developed drive bore OCZ branding for the first time. OCZ has continued developing their own products as well, but now the two development roadmaps are being combined, some projects have been repurposed as Toshiba products instead of OCZ products, and work is underway to reduce the overlap between the product lines.
Organizationally, OCZ is being absorbed into Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC), though the brand and the products they develop will still be international. Later this year, TAEC will be consolidating several Silicon Valley offices onto a single campus in San Jose and their former OCZ employees will no longer work at a separate location.
The public facing OCZ name will function as a consumer-only brand which now features just three products. The Trion, Vector and RevoDrive families are all that's left and the names have been shortened to just two letters, giving a lineup of TR150, VT180 and RD400. The former two are just rebadges of existing products while the RD400 is the successor and replacement for the RevoDrive 350. Older products that are still supported but not for sale are retaining their original naming. The Toshiba brand may still be applied to some consumer SSDs particularly in markets where the OCZ brand is less well-established, so the distinction between brands won't be as clear as it is for Micron and Crucial. Where the two brands do coexist in the consumer market, expect to see OCZ used as the more enthusiast-oriented brand.
In addition to renaming the SSDs, several of OCZ's other trademarks are being replaced with more mainstream and mundane names. The OCZ SSD Guru software is now the OCZ SSD Utility and the ShieldPlus Warranty is now the Advanced Warranty Program, but both are functionally equivalent. It does appear that going forward the Advanced Warranty will be offered in fewer countries (or else OCZ drives will be sold in fewer countries), but no existing warranties are being dropped. The new OCZ web site lists fewer supported legacy products than were listed at the time of the Toshiba acquisition as still eligible for the full original warranty term. OCZ has assured me that drives like the original Vector that are still within their original warranty period are still supported, so it appears that Toshiba is just trying to avoid mentioning on their site the pre-acquisition OCZ drives that used a competitor's NAND.
The future of OCZ's enterprise products is less certain. Intrepid, Saber and Z-Drive products are still supported but are no longer for sale. It's likely that Toshiba hasn't entirely decided what to do with those product lines but if they reappear in some form they will be under the Toshiba brand with different names. Likewise, any OCZ enterprise SSD projects that haven't made it to market yet are now Toshiba enterprise SSD development projects. This area in particular might be more likely to see cancellations due to overlap between OCZ and Toshiba efforts, but we are unlikely to get much information about such inner workings from Toshiba.
Source: OCZ
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Ninhalem - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
This process is standard when brands get bought. You keep the original brand around for a while to not confuse customers and then slowly integrate the brand into your own, continually informing your customers of the change.Carolynsa - Monday, August 15, 2016 - link
That is a good but not really correct way of making such advertising as can be seen from the example of the websites that are showing completely the same direction and the given information https://goodpokemon.comChaitanya - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I hope toshiba improves after sales support, Ocz was quite notorious for lack of customer support.Samus - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
The new OCZ/Toshiba has an excellent RMA process. I've unfortunately, recently, had to use it. An ARC100 started getting SMART errors so I moved all my data off it to a spare X25-M I had lying around and contacted their support.They actually offer free advanced replacement. That means they mail you a new drive first. I said sure, even though I didn't need the drive ASAP, and it arrived FedEx next day air with a prepaid return label. I couldn't believe this level of support in the consumer space involving an $80 SSD...
It's a stark contrast to the old OCZ I'll tell you that. Man did OCZ suck. Their SSD's sucked and their support sucked. I remember when Anand interviewed the CEO and said he should ditch the OCZ name because it had such a bad reputation, and now look, Toshiba is effectively finally doing this.
plopke - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Speaking about thosiba , do they have any 3D nand consumer devices on the market? Weren't they taking about 6TB drives in 2016, all enterprise i guess?Zaxx420 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Actually OCZ's support forums and staff were amongst the best I've ever seen. They bent over backwards twice to resolve my issues...when they couldn't fix my problem, the shipped me a free upgrade to something that'd work for me. Their support forum was also a big enthusiast community with lotsa folks willing to help...not just staff. Ocz's bad rap came from piss poor validation resources with the new Sandforce controllers...they paid a HUGE price and penalty for being the first to market with the latest and greatest controller(s)...Sandforce used the hell out of them. It took Intel stepping in before they finally straightened out SF's firmware.fanofanand - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
My DDR2-1066 OCZ RAM crapped out after a couple of years and they wouldn't honor the "lifetime warranty". I never overvolted it or anything like that, didn't even overclock it past the rated speed. Good riddance OCZ.ocztaec - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Hi fanofanand,As this is my first post on this article please allow me to identify myself as a Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) representative. Thank you for your comment and I’m sorry to hear that you had an issue with the OCZ DDR2-1066 RAM. Reliability is a key area of focus at TAEC. We understand how you feel and hope that one day we will have the opportunity to demonstrate the reliability of our current products. Thank you again for your feedback.
Murloc - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I'm not sure what advantage using the OCZ brand can bring to Toshiba, Toshiba is a brand with a better reputation.danb298 - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
I'm not sure I would buy an OCZ branded product again. Was badly burned by failing Vertex 2's and failing customer support :(