EMC CEO: Flash technology is revolutionizing storage

Last month, we launched The Server Room, Ars Technica's new community for IT professionals. The Server Room launch is sponsored by Dell’s Future of Storage. Over the next few weeks we will be featuring topics and discussions relating to IT and storage.

During keynotes at the EMC World conference earlier this week and again at a JP Morgan conference yesterday, EMC CEO Joe Tucci proclaimed that demand for digital storage is still strong and that flash memory is poised to revolutionize the storage industry.

Flash storage solutions offer a wide range of advantages in numerous contexts, but the most desirable benefits are higher performance and reduced energy consumption. Average data read latencies are much lower on flash-based media, which means faster data access. EMC's own tests indicate that the current generation of flash-based drives is approximately 30 times faster than conventional drives.

When we looked at datacenter storage issues earlier this year, we noted that hard disks are one of the biggest energy drains in the average datacenter and pointed out that solid-state drives and flash-based caching offer a compelling way to reduce power waste and excess heat. According to EMC, those power savings could be as much as 38 percent.

EMC began offering support for flash-based solid state drives for its own Symmetrix DMX-4 storage system earlier this year in 73GB and 146GB capacities.

Although flash storage is still too prohibitively expensive for widespread adoption, the technology is evolving at an extremely rapid pace. As flash storage density continues to grow, it will become an increasingly affordable solution for enterprise buyers. EMC storage president David Donatelli predicts that flash storage will reach the same price point as high-end conventional storage technologies within two years and will completely reshape the storage market.

"I really believe flash technology is going to significantly change the way storage products are designed and developed over the next coming years," Donatelli told NetworkWorld. "It's here today. It's already making a big impact."

EMC says that the demand for storage is growing at about 60 percent per year, which is quite strong but still lower than what it was during the height of the .com boom. A big area for growth is the cloud computing space where we are seeing strong competition and some innovative strategies.

The need for more storage isn't going to go away any time soon. A study conducted last year by IDC revealed that the total volume of digital information created globally is growing explosively and now far exceeds total storage capacity. As flash technology becomes more affordable, it could bring about some significant changes in the way that companies build out their data centers.

Further reading

• Barron's has solid coverage of the JP Morgan conference, including the EMC CEO speech.