Coming off the recent Flash Summit I have to admit that I'm duely impressed with the progress in the solid state disk arena. Love (or should I say hype) is definitely in the air for these devices. To hear the many speakers at the Flash Summit (held in Santa Clara) espouse the wonders of SSDs, one would think that hard disk drives are the nasty step child better forgotten. The Summit was well attended - in one case there were so many folks attending a SSD design session that the session was moved to a bigger room because the hallways were blocked with the overflow of SSD enthusiasts. I like it - excitement in the storage biz is always a good thing! Who says that storage is "borage"? Not anymore! But there's hype, hype, hype...lots of hype!
Everything was going great at the Summit, forum speaker after speaker singing praises for SSDs until near the end of that morning's session, a speaker from Fujitsu (I'll withhold his name lest he gets branded a party pooper) turned a garden hose on the participants. His point was clear: where are the buyers of these SSDs? Where are the forecasts by the tier 1 vendors to support the excitement? He wasn't seeing it. In fact, he made the point through projected sales mix of SSDs, 10K, 15K and 7.2kRPM HDDs that SSD sales didn't get interesting for another 5 years - or longer. Door prize to Fujitsu.
So, back to earth, just where are we going with SSDs? Are they in your immediate future? Well, yes and no. And what should you, as the data center CIO/storage administrator/guru, be doing now?
First things first. Learn about the SSD technology! This is not hard disk drive technology. While many of the concepts are similar, there are nuances that are critical to understand. Just so happens I'm writing a document for Burton Group clients to help with this, but for those not subscribed, search the web. There are many resources out there that can help enlighten you.
This is a nascent industry just crawling out of the proverbial swamp. Many vendors will come and go - be prepared for vendor churn. Not every vendor will survive. By some counts there are some 70 vendors in this space. Having many vendors can be a good thing - spurning innovation, leaving no rock unturned - but in the end only the most fit will survive carrying their prized intellectual property (IP) with them. As that IP gets recognized and bartered, there will be vendor consolidation and ultimately the game will shift to the "big boys" and a few lucky upstarts.
In comes Intel. Intel's much anticipated announcement today is just what the SSD industry needed. A power house company endorsing these new fangled SSDs. Even better is that the product line spans from laptops to enterprise applications. This is an important step forward, bolstered by support by Sun (big), Lenovo (bigger) and HP (biggest). Good news no doubt for customers of laptops and soon, even though I know EMC has been doing this for a while, enterprise storage.
Ok, before we get too excited again, take note: pricing for SSDs must come down and soon for the laptop market. Yes, many a marketing type likes to espouse the price of SSDs based on IOs compared to HDDs - a handsome comparison - but that's not what consumers by and large will understand. Does your mother understand IO transactions per second? I doubt it. She wants more for less. She wants a snappy responding laptop. SSDs for laptops need to be cheaper - and noticeably faster - for wide scale acceptance. Consumers will lead the way.
Back in the enterprise, the place where you can lose your job for jumping on a new technology too soon, things are a little more cautious. Yes, data centers are hungry for more performance from their storage but not at too high a risk. And no doubt the risk seekers will be early adopters of SSDs. But the bulk of enterprise customers (aka CIOs), I'll predict, will be watching and waiting for the credibility of the new technology to build. A key inflection point will be when they realize that their own laptops contain an SSD, and then the love will flow.
Now that Intel has arrived with credible products, not to say others don't also have decent SSD products, those others just lack the financial muscle. Watch for other big players like Samsung and Seagate to show up at the enterprise class data center SSD party. Then it's Game On: enterprise storage subsystem vendors will be all over themselves designing SSDs into their boxes looking for the love. And then maybe Fujitsu, best wishes always, will be proved wrong and be late to the party.
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