OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced its board of directors has appointed Ralph Schmitt as the Company's president and chief executive officer effective immediately. Ralph Schmitt has been a member of the Company's board of directors since April 2011.

"I am pleased to announce that OCZ's board has appointed Ralph Schmitt as the Company's president and chief executive officer," said Adam Epstein, OCZ's lead independent director. "Ralph's knowledge of OCZ's business, customers, and target markets along with his extensive management experience and technical expertise make him the ideal person to lead OCZ through the next phase of its development."

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, will showcase its enterprise solid state virtualization solutions at this year's VMworld Barcelona 2012, Exhibit B414, located at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via -- North Entrance, Barcelona, Spain, from October 9th through October 11th.

Featured solutions include OCZ's fourth generation Z-Drive R4 PCI Express (PCIe) SSD and VXL cache and virtualization software that delivers industry-leading flash data caching into VMware virtualized server platforms. This VMware Ready solution distributes flash caching resources on-demand across virtual machines (VMs) to maximize performance, and distributes the flash between VMs based on need, making sure that no VM inefficiently occupies flash when it can be better used elsewhere in the environment. The end result is optimal utilization of flash cache regardless of how many VMs are running concurrently.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., announced today that its Board of Directors has appointed Alex Mei, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer as Interim CEO, effective immediately. Mr. Mei's appointment follows the Board's acceptance of Ryan Petersen's resignation as President, CEO and a director of the Company. Mr. Mei will also maintain his current responsibilities as EVP and Chief Marketing Officer until a permanent CEO has been selected.

In regards to his decision to resign, Mr. Petersen said, "I am very pleased to have transitioned the Company from a niche developer, manufacturer, and seller of high-performance DRAM memory modules to a global leader in solid-state storage solutions."

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that its 2.5-inch SATA III Deneva 2 SSD series, supporting multi-level cell (MLC) synchronous and asynchronous NAND formats, are now compatible with QNAP Systems Inc.'s Turbo NAS products. The addition of Deneva 2 SSDs into QNAP's Turbo NAS peripherals compatibility list represents the first successful enterprise certification of OCZ SSDs into this platform and the third successful certification of OCZ SATA III SSDs, joining OCZ Vertex 3 and Agility 3 SSDs on the list.

With the industry's fastest transactional performance for SATA III-based drives, Deneva 2 SSDs deliver up to 80,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance (random 4K writes) and a maximum bandwidth of 550 MB/s. They also support best-in-class enterprise endurance and reliability, featuring power loss data protection, minimal write amplification, intelligent block management and wear-leveling, security encryption, and advanced error correction.

Yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum 2012 in San Francisco the OCZ Technology Group (OCZ for short) provided a quick peek at its upcoming solid state drive named Vector. Coming in a 2.5-inch form factor, the Vector features a Barefoot 3 controller (designed by Indilinx from top to bottom, unlike the Barefoot 2 which has Marvell technology), 2x nm MLC NAND, and a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface. Unfortunately OCZ didn't say anything about the drive's performance.

The Vector is set to be released in Q4 in at least two capacities - 256 GB and 512 GB.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced its preliminary revenue for the second quarter of fiscal year 2013 (Q2'13), which ended on August 31, 2012.

The Company expects preliminary revenue for the second fiscal quarter of 2013 to be approximately $110 to 120 million compared to the previously guided revenue range of $130 to $140 million. This preliminary revenue range compares to $113.6 million for the first fiscal quarter of 2013 and $78.5 million for the second fiscal quarter of 2012.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs), memory modules, and power supplies for computing devices and systems, announces the availability of OCZ new ZS line series of power supplies in 550-watt, 650-watt and 750-watt models that offers consumers superior value for home desktops and gaming systems. It provides the high efficiency, cool operation, and a compact case design, the ZS Series offers an excellent price point for system builders looking for a quality upgrade in a variety of power options.

The ZS Series is ideal for system builders and gamers, and is capable of powering dual-GPU platforms equipped for NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX modes. The PSU is kept cool under heavy usage with a large temperature and load-controlled 135 mm double ball-bearing fan, and this high-efficiency PSU also meets strict 80-Plus Bronze energy saving requirements by converting up to a full 85% of AC to DC power at typical loads.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and power management solutions for computing devices and systems, today unveiled the Silencer Mk III 1200W Power Supply from PC Power & Cooling. Offering industrial-grade performance and stability for demanding computing environments in a new maximum wattage option, the Silencer Mk III meets the highest rated efficiency and provides ultra-quiet operation in a modular design.

The industrial-grade yet refined Mk III 1200W is the Silencer Series' most comprehensively powerful solution yet. Meeting the stringent 80 Plus Platinum certified rating for the highest energy efficiency rating possible, the 1200W Mk III features over 92% efficiency at typical workloads. The Mk III combines a single +12V rail, premium components including 100% Japanese 105°C capacitors, and heavy-duty protection circuitries while maintaining continuous, stable output at a demanding 50°C ambient temperature.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, will showcase its latest storage products, encompassing a mix of both solid state drives and software solutions, at this year's Flash Memory Summit, Booth #208, Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, California, from August 21st through August 23rd.

Demonstrating SSD products along with recent partner implementations, OCZ will showcase a comprehensive lineup of innovative solutions for business, server, and OEM clients. This includes product presentations of both the impending Intrepid 3 SATA III-based SSD solution based on the company's Indilinx Everest 2 architecture, along with the company's leading PCI Express (PCIe)-based Z-Drive R4 featuring new Linux Acceleration software (LXL) that unleashes the full performance potential of infrastructures that use this popular open source operating system. Live technical demos of LXL and Z-Drive R4 SSDs will include a VDI boot storm, efficient SQL CPU utilization, and vMotion and Fault Tolerance support.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCZ) today announced that its enterprise Z-Drive R4 PCI Express (PCIe) SSD series has achieved VMware Ready status. This designation indicates that after a detailed validation process Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSDs have achieved VMware's highest level of endorsement, and can be found on the VMware Solution Exchange (VSX) here.

"By using Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD drives with VMware vSphere 5.0, enterprises can accelerate virtualized applications while delivering fast and reliable access to data without burdening host CPU and memory resources. When combined with OCZ's VXL flash virtualization software, Z-Drive R4 delivers a comprehensive and compelling virtual performance system that efficiently distributes flash resources across VMs to provide an even greater performance of key applications in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), e-mail and database servers," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that the company's new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Taipei, Taiwan has achieved ISO 9001: 2008 certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This independent certification from ISO demonstrates OCZ's commitment to quality and reinforces that the company's newly consolidated manufacturing facility has met ISO's stringent qualifications.

The ISO 9001: 2008 standard was established by the ISO governing board and has become the most comprehensive standard on quality management and practices worldwide. It is designed to enable companies with a set of principles that ensure a consistent and systematic approach to manufacturing while providing high product quality and reliability, which in turn, translates to customer satisfaction.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, reports its first quarter (Q1'13) results which ended on May 31, 2012.

Financial Highlights

● Net revenue in Q1'13 was a record $113.6 million, and increased 54% compared with net revenue of $73.8 million reported in Q1'12.
● Q1'13 SSD revenue reached a record $106.5 million; an increase of 54% compared with Q1'12 SSD revenue of $69.1 million.
● Gross margin in Q1'13 25.0% compared with 20.0% in Q1'12
● Net loss for Q1'13 was $6.3 million or $0.09 loss per share compared with a net loss of $9.1 million or $0.20 loss per share in Q1'12.
● Achieved Record Bookings in Q1'13.
● Non-GAAP gross margin was 25.2% compared with 20.0% in Q1'12.
● Non-GAAP net loss for Q1'13 was $11.5 million or $0.17 loss per share as compared with a non-GAAP net profit for Q1'12 of $0.5 million or $0.01 per share.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that its PCI Express (PCIe) SSD platform, featuring all Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD models and VXL software, accelerates virtualization of Microsoft's cloud-ready SQL Server 2012 database. Providing enterprise, host-based flash performance and support for all virtualization capabilities, this combination of OCZ SSD hardware, with acceleration and virtualization software, is an optimal and cost-effective solution for the data access requirements of SQL Server 2012.

Nearly two months after releasing Firmware Update 1.4RC for its Vertex 4 series solid state drives (SSDs), OCZ released yet another firmware update, which pushes sequential speeds further up. The new firmware update version 1.5 beta increases maximum read speed on the 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB variants of Vertex 4 to 560 MB/s (up from 550 MB/s), while maximum write speeds are increased by 6.5% on average. The 256 GB variant sees the highest write performance increase, by around 10%. The update can be applied using OCZ Toolbox.

QNAP Systems, Inc. is extending the number of compatible peripherals for its Turbo NAS products. The additions, including five 500GB to 1TB 2.5-inch internal SATA hard drives, ten 2.5-inch 60GB to 480GB internal Solid State Drives, two USB Wi-Fi adapters, and one USB camera are now fully compatible. The expanded peripherals are expected to give users greater convenience and deployment flexibility.

Hard drive prices refuse to budge after last year's floods that struck manufacturing facilities in Thailand, even as manufacturers turn record profit. The solid-state drive market, on the other hand, is finally rolling with competition, high volume production, and advancements in NAND flash technologies. With memory majors such as Hynix adding new NAND flash manufacturing facilities to their infrastructure, SSD is expected to finally get its big break in the mainstream market.

SSD prices, according to price aggregators, are on a free-fall. Models which once held relative pricing as high as $2 per gigabyte, and going deep within the $1 mark. For example, Crucial's widely-praised M4 256 GB SSD has a price per GB of 'just' $0.82, and a market price around $200, something unheard of, for a 256 GB SSD with transfer rates of over 500 MB/s. With SSD major OCZ Technology releasing new generations of drives under the Vertex 4 and Agility 4 series that use Indilinx processors, older Vertex 3 and Agility 3 models are being phased out, some of these are seeing sub $1/GB prices. Intel is also responding to market trends, with prices of its SSD 520 series dropping sharply. Find a boat-load of stats at the source.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced that its SAS-based Talos 2 SSDs will be showcased during Microsoft's North American TechEd (technology education) conferences. With this partnership, TechEd participants will get a firsthand look at the upcoming Windows Server 2012 and how it delivers the enterprise-class storage capabilities that IT departments require. OCZ Talos 2 drives will be highlighted in various Windows Server 2012 demonstrations showing their leading application performance and data access, high endurance and reliability, seamless integration of 2.5-inch form factors, and true dual-ported SAS capabilities.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, will showcase the Company's latest enterprise and client storage solutions at Computex 2012 in Taipei, Taiwan June 6 through June 9 at the Taipei International Convention Center (TICC).

Continuing to demonstrate leadership in both the enterprise and consumer markets, OCZ will display a comprehensive lineup of its innovative SSD products. For business, server, and OEM clients, OCZ will showcase PCI Express (PCIe) SAN acceleration and replacement solutions, and unveil the impending Intrepid 3 SATA III SSD Series based on the Everest 2 architecture. Live demos at the booth will include both the current industry-leading Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCIe SSD that delivers over one million IOPS, and the highly anticipated Z-Drive R5 Series based on the co-developed OCZ-Marvell Kilimanjaro platform that raises the bar in performance, reliability, and endurance. OCZ will also showcase the VXL Storage Accelerator software that enables large scale deployment of a virtualized environment for businesses to eliminate the need for costly tier-1 SANs in a wide range of enterprise IT infrastructures.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today unveiled its new Agility 4 SSD series that delivers an ideal balance of 6Gbps SATA III interface speed, exceptional input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance, and enterprise-grade endurance and reliability all in a value-oriented SSD.

Utilizing OCZ's cutting-edge Indilinx Everest 2 controller platform (first introduced in the flagship Vertex 4 SSD series), Agility 4 SSDs offer a cost-effective alternative to other SATA III SSD solutions in the market making them ideal for mainstream entertainment, gaming, and mobile storage applications.

FinalWire released its monthly update to AIDA64, a popular system diagnostic and benchmark utility. Apart from support for over 2,000 new devices, including NVIDIA GeForce 600 series, OCZ Vertex 4 series, and Intel SSD 330 series; the new version provides information on available speech APIs, and includes a revamped SensorPanel with graphs and gauges that reads from the sensor module.DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 v2.50 Installer - EXE | Portable - ZIP

It's proven: the thermal interface material (TIM) used by Intel, inside the integrated heatspreader (IHS) of its Core "Ivy Bridge" processors are behind its higher than expected load temperatures. This assertion was first made in late-April by an Overclockers.com report, and was recently put to test by Japanese tech portal PC Watch, in which an investigator carefully removed the IHS of a Core i7-3770K processor, removed the included TIM and binding grease, and replaced them with a pair of aftermarket performance TIMs, such as OCZ Freeze and Coolaboratory Liquid Pro.

PC Watch findings show that swapping the TIM, if done right, can shave stock clock (3.5 GHz, Auto voltage) temperatures by as much as 18% (lowest temperatures by the Coolaboratory TIM), and 4.00 GHz @ 1.2V temperatures by as much as 23% (again, lowest temperatures on the Coolaboratory TIM). The change in TIM was also change the overclockability of the chip, which was then able to sustain higher core voltages to facilitate higher core clock speeds. The report concluded that Intel's decision to use thermal paste inside the IHS of its Ivy Bridge chips, instead of fluxless solder, poses a very real impact on temperatures and overclockability.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, and IceWEB Storage Corporation today announced that OCZ's SAS-based Talos 2 SSDs and SATA III-based Deneva 2 SSDs have been selected by IceWEB for inclusion in IceWEB's complete line of unified data storage systems. IceWEB leverages OCZ's enterprise-class SAS and SATA SSDs to enable its storage systems with ultra high performance of I/O intensive applications while lowering power consumption and associated cooling costs.

Today's enterprise, mission-critical applications demand very high levels of I/O performance from storage systems that hard disk drives (HDDs) simply cannot provide since they only deliver about 100 to 200 input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance. Therefore, in developing unified data storage systems that yield ultra high-performance, high reliability and availability, low power and cost-effectiveness, IceWEB required solid-state storage as these drives store and access data through NAND flash memory versus from spinning disks. In a typical industry comparison, it takes about 50 HDDs to provide the IOPS performance of one SSD, and an SSD only consumes a fraction of the power of an HDD.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today introduced release candidate firmware v1.4RC, which dramatically improves the performance of its Vertex 4 SATA 3.0 Series SSDs. Most notably, v1.4RC nearly doubles sequential write performance for lower capacity models, significantly boosts sequential read performance at low queue depths, and improves general performance under real-world workloads comprising mixed reads and writes.

Despite already achieving breakthrough levels of performance with its flagship Vertex 4, OCZ has taken aggressive strides to further distance itself from the competition and to maintain its undisputed leadership in SSD technology. Compared to Vertex 4's original firmware version v1.3, v1.4RC more than doubles sequential write performance of the 128 GB model and boosts the 256 GB model from 380 MB/s to 465 MB/s. These dramatic gains were achieved through proprietary algorithms which orchestrate the sequence of physical NAND programming operations to ensure that each NAND device is optimally utilized at all times. For the mainstream user, entry-level capacities of Vertex 4 can now achieve nearly the same sequential write performance as the industry-leading 512GB model at a mere fraction of the cost.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, will showcase the Company's latest enterprise storage solutions at the Interop 2012 event at the Mandalay Bay Event Center in Las Vegas, Nevada May 8 through May 10.

Interop is a leading business technology event that focuses on the latest innovations in cloud computing, virtualization, security, mobility, and data center applications, attracting IT and corporate decision-makers from across the global business community. OCZ will showcase the comprehensive lineup of innovative SSD storage solutions targeted for high end enterprise clients, including the customizable Deneva 2 SSD Series, Z-Drive R4 PCIe SAN acceleration solution, and Talos SAS SSDs to optimize productivity and throughput to address data center, virtualization, and HPC storage challenges head-on.

OCZ introduced a new high capacity variant of its Octane consumer SSD series, the OCT1-25SAT3-1T. Built in the 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gb/s interface, the new Octane variant provides 1 TB of unformatted capacity. Based on the Indilinx Everest processor, the drive packs 25 nm MLC NAND flash, and utilizes 512 MB of DRAM cache. It is rated to provide sequential transfer speeds of up to 460 MB/s (reads), 330 MB/s (writes), with 4K read/write random access performance of up to 24,000 IOPS and 32,000 IOPS, respectively. All modern consumer SSD features are present, including TRIM, NCQ, ECC, and 256-bit AES data-encryption. Slated for mid-May, the Octane 1 TB by OCZ won't exactly be cheap.