OCZ Technology recently surprised the industry by introducing a flash drive, named Rally, to its product lineup. The majority of us couldn’t have expected such a product from OCZ especially considering that the market is already soaked with flash drives from numerous manufacturers. Manufacturing a flash drive is apparently so effortless that any company with a mediocre sense of flash drives can produce thousands of units almost instantly. Plus, the cost of manufacturing a flash drive isn’t too high either, so it makes sense for smaller companies to reveal such a product.

Initially, we didn’t think much of Rally, but there are two things going for it that could make it an instant success for the company – the price and performance enhancing dual-channel configuration. Logically, you would think that Rally would carry a premium price tag, but it seems otherwise.

We recently had the chance to interview Tony Leech, Product Specialist, OCZ Technology regarding Rally and OCZ’s strategies, and here’s what he had to say. Please keep in mind that CoolTechZone.com has slightly edited the interview to clarify select replies.

OCZ went from cooling and memory products to flash drives. Why’s that?
We believed flash needed a new direction; our dual channel drives were just the direction we thought it needed to go.

How long was Rally in production before it was officially launched?
We were working on releasing the new drives for around 10 weeks, maybe a little less.

What’ll be the retail price of the units (512MB, 1GB and 2GB)?
The 512MB will cost $41, 1GB will cost $79 and 2GB will cost $139 MSRP; plus, online will probably be cheaper.

Isn’t the market saturated with more than enough flash drives?
Slow drives "Yes", dual-channel drives "No".

What’s the concept behind dual-channel flash drives?
Same as dual-channel RAM pretty much. An increase in bandwidth will increase read/write speeds.

Is dual-channel the next thing in flash drives?
We think so. Flash will only get faster with time.

Can we expect OCZ to introduce additional flash drives in the future?
I hope so, but for now we are testing the market. However, we are working on the next generation already.

First Corsair, now OCZ – is there a trend emerging? Are we going to see more memory makers with flash drives in their product line?
That’s hard to say, as I only know what OCZ is doing. OCZ is firmly committed to expanding product lines, and we have much more to add real soon.

Isn’t OCZ late with Rally?
Not late, cautious maybe. We didn't want to launch a mundane product that’s already flooding the market, but launching something more specialized takes a little time.

Special thanks to OCZ Technology and Tony Leech for their time and insight on various topics we discussed today.

Note: If you have questions that you would like to ask OCZ, please forward them to us, and we'll be more than delighted to conduct a follow-up interview.