It's becoming pretty clear that SSDs represent the future of storage as we know it. This is the reason why most of the major manufacturers on the storage market are trying their best in order to catch a spot on this bandwagon to the future. Some of them might even try some extreme solutions, like going for their competitor's business, as in the case of the rumor regarding Seagate's possible interest in Intel's SSD partner, Micron. And this is exactly the subject we'll tackle as follows, starting from a statement made by chief-analyst Avi Cohen from Avian Securities.

Thus, as Mr. Chris Preimesberger from eWeek informs us, the analyst suggested that the best thing Seagate could do (other than go for Intel's stake in Micro or set up its own SSD plants out of scratch) was to try to take over SanDisk, one of the world's best-known manufacturers of SanDisk modules.

Practically, it's a question of supply and demand. Seagate wants in on the SSD market, but it's probably not willing to start a war against Intel. On the other hand, Intel (via Micron) has some cross-licensing agreements with SanDisk, the respective agreements becoming null and void should Seagate take over Intel's share in Micron.

So, the only logical solution would be for Seagate to go ahead and cough up the dough (billions of dollars) required for purchasing SanDisk. Actually, this would be one of the best things the storage giant could do, because SanDisk is also the most reliable (and cheapest) manufacturer of NAND flash modules, the core of SSDs. And, as Mr. Cohen points out in his interview, "The biggest issue in producing SSDs -- in order to do this in a profitable manner over time -- is that you need to have a captive source of raw NAND, either to make your own or team up with somebody to make their own."

However, this is, at least for the time being, just pure speculation. First of all, SanDisk will most likely not go easy, as it's managed to become one of the world's biggest companies over the past couple of years. Then, SanDisk might be very interested in keeping their SSD business for themselves. So, it remains to be seen whether Seagate will have the will (and the money) to actually go for SanDisk's neck.