1.035: enterprise flash drives get wired!
Despite the fact that the Right Honorable Martin Glassborow (aka Storagebod) doesn't think EMC's first-to-market enterprise-ready flash drives are all that innovative, the folks over at Wired Magazine have included flash storage as one of their Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008.
Coming in at a respectable #7 (and ahead of Flexible Displays, Edible Chips and Michael Phelp's Speedo LZR), Wired shares my optimism that most data centers will begin deploying enterprise-class flash storage for their most performance-demanding tiered storage applications in the coming year. Especially now that all the nay-sayers back in 1H08 now admit that they'll be shipping the same drives "soon" – including the previously vocal opponents over at Hitachi, HP, Pillar and 3PAR. (Sadly, IBM demonstrates its continued inability to even play catch-up in the storage technology space…let's not forget that IBM's official response to flash was to promote the increased use of TAPE!).
No, all the storage vendors who want to survive to see 2010 will be shipping and supporting flash drives in 2009, mark my words. And as Martin underscores in his post, the secret ingredient for both the Memristor and the flash drive will be the 
that leverages them 
.
Like many others, though, I question how the Apple App Store won out on Wired's Technology list…or even why the top 2 positions were awarded to personal communication device-related products. Personally, I'd say Mozy will have a bigger impact on the world than either the AppStore or the Android.
But then, I promised myself not to do one of those prediction posts this year.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention: Robin Harris apparently made no such promise – he ranks EFDs #3 in his 2008 Top Storage Products (like Martin, he picks Atmos in the top position).
Well, anyway, that's probably all I have for the remainder of the year. So…
Have a Happy New Year! 
technorati tags: enterprise flash drives,EMC,Symmetrix,DMX,memristor,Wired Magazine,Mozy,Decho,Apple,Android,iTunes App Store
But Barry, does anyone really take notice of what Tired says any more? I agree with you on one thing, Mozy-like applications will be very important but for them to become truly important...FTTH and WiMax need to become ubiquitous IMO.
Posted by: Martin G | December 29, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Barry, you will be happy to know that I gave the Wikibon CTO awards for storage technology innovation to EMC's Flash Drives (together with Axxana's EDR, which also uses flash drives).
Happy New Year!
David Floyer
Posted by: David Floyer | January 06, 2009 at 06:44 AM