Santa Ana-based flash memory storage products maker STEC Inc. signed a deal with one of its largest customers to supply solid-state drives for $120 million, sending its shares up more than 15 percent to an all-time high. STEC’s shares had already been soaring!

Even though STEC did not disclose the name of the customer, the company expects revenue from the sale of the product called ZeusIOPS solid state drives to exceed $220 million in 2009. The company’s overall revenue in 2008 was $227 million. STEC’s customers include EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM Corp., and Fujitsu Ltd.

ZeusIOPS drive is used to store information on computers in data storage networks or servers. STEC’s drives use flash memory instead of the disks found in traditional disk drives. ZeusIOPS drives are faster, more durable and unlike hard disk drives they have no moving parts and thus they are known as solid state drives. Even though SSD are more expensive than traditional hard drives, they are increasingly used in laptop PCs, reason being they are more durable and use less power as compared to traditional hard drives.

In June, STEC had raised its second-quarter outlook and it expects sales of ZeusIOPS drives to exceed $80 million during the first half of 2009, up from prior forecasts of $65 million and $53 million.

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