Since SandForce announced the SF-2000 series processors, every SSD manufacturer out there seems to be going the enterprise storage route, Mushkin being the latest to do just so with the Mushkin EP product family that is going to come to market (surprise, surprise) in Q1 2011.

As these are based on the SF-2500 and SF-2600 SSD processors, we get pretty much the same performance numbers as we have seen in solid state drives built by its competitors, namely up to 500MB/s read/write sequential transfer rate and up to 60,000 sustained random read/write IOPS, while also featuring the same DuraWrite and RAISE technologies that are specific to these SandForce controllers.

"This new series of SSDs continues Mushkin's tradition of high-performance, high-reliability flash storage products.

This is an area in which we have made great strides and we're very excited to introduce our technology exclusive to the business sector.

We feel very confident staking our name with these SSDs for business critical applications." said Brian Flood, Mushkin director of product development.

As I told you earlier these drives will come to retail in Q1 2011, although sampling is expected to begin 4Q10.

However, I wonder what will Mushkin do in order to differentiate itself from the competition since a lot of companies announced they will build SSDs based on the new SF-2500 and SF-2600 SSD processors, at this point, all these solutions looking exactly the same to me.

Add to that the fact that Mushkin isn't a brand that has a strong following in the enterprise storage market (this being their first product of this kind that I know off) and you see why it will be particularly tough for them to get into this sector.

But hard as it may be for them to establish a strong foothold in the enterprise storage market, this also comes with some perks for the consumer since all these offerings will surely force manufacturers to start a price war, leading to lower priced SSDs, and that I something that no one can argue with.