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Solid State: From Silver Bullet To Silver Lining: Page 2 of 2

An Infrastructure Play … But Applications Still Matter

In ESG's research, 62% of current solid state users report that their organizations purchased it in order to alleviate performance challenges associated with a specific application. Conversely, more than half of potential solid state storage adopters do not believe that their organizations will deploy the technology as a means to address specific application performance challenges. This shows the shift toward solid state storage having broader horizontal applicability. It may also be reflective of the increasing availability of auto-tiering and caching options for solid state that preclude users from having to be quite so specific in their upfront knowledge of how solid state will be leveraged. Either way, whatever is chicken and whichever is egg, we are clearly headed for a more integrated and "peanut-buttered" use of solid state.

Of course it would be silly to suggest that applications don't matter; our research highlighted a variety of specific application types for which solid state storage was (or may be) acquired. While a range of applications are cited, the most significant in terms of influencing solid state adoption were clearly--and not surprisingly--databases/OLTP and financial applications/ERP. Among potential users there is an increase in the number and type of applications mentioned, which serves to reinforce the concept of a shift toward a more horizontal usage of solid state.

An I/O Aid For Virtualized Server Environments and Automated Tiering

Storage performance is a widely recognized challenge stemming from deployments of server virtualization technology. As such, it is not surprising that more than one-third (38%) of current users identified the alleviation of I/O bottlenecks caused by server virtualization as the primary reason for their organization's initial deployment of solid state storage. Similarly, more than half of potential adopters (59%) divulged that it was at least one of the reasons for deploying or considering solid state storage.

In terms of a link between automated tiered storage and solid state storage, nearly a quarter of current solid state users (24%) are already leveraging automated tiered storage, compared to 17% of potential adopters. But is there a direct linkage beyond commonality? Clearly, such automated tiering supports the concept of--and drives the need for--frequently accessed and/or transactional data to be aligned with a higher performing storage tier--such as solid state. Although potential solid state adopters were almost twice as likely as current users (41% vs. 23%) to dismiss a connection between the two technologies, the number of organizations that have seen tiering serve as a catalyst for solid state storage adoption (45% of current users and 59% of potential adopters) does demonstrate a relationship.

Golden Outlook?

As IT professionals increasingly appreciate the generic, infrastructural value of solid state storage--and as vendors expand their offerings to take advantage of it in a more automated fashion--so we should expect that a small amount of solid state storage will become a standard "modus operandi" for the majority of users. It will be deployed as a horizontal "turbo-boost" sprinkled broadly across not only applications but also general IT needs such as tiering and virtualization; in this way users can get a significantly improved "bang" for their not inconsiderable "buck." As such, the percentage of I/O handled by solid state will far exceed its share of the storage dollar spend and/or of the total installed storage capacity. This may change years from now as more advanced foundational solid state technologies emerge, but, for the moment, solid state looks set to become established as a small but valuable play in capacity terms, and a huge play in I/O importance. In many ways the user focus for solid state is turning from a narrow application focus to a broader applicability--a silver lining for storage infrastructures.

Mark Peters is a Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, a leading independent authority on enterprise storage, analytics, and a range of other business technology interests.

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