13/06/2015
Flash-conomics: The economics of flash storage beyond speeds and feeds
Storage today isn’t about speeds and feeds. And it isn’t about capacity. More and more we are hearing from customers that accessing and analyzing data is critical to their business and really drives economics. So as more and more customers adopt flash technology, it isn’t just because flash storage is fast; it’s because of the economics behind flash, or “Flash-conomics,” if you will.
What is Flash-conomics?
Flash-conomics is a way of thinking beyond speeds and feeds to the overall economic benefits offered by flash-based storage such as IBM FlashSystem. It’s a better way to view flash storage costs because it is much more inclusive than just CAPEX or OPEX, which refer only to deployment or operational costs. Flash-conomics invites other values to enter the discussion, such as the value to the enterprise of faster and deeper analytics, greater system reliability and lower power consumption.
A good way to gain insights into Flash-conomics might be to ask some questions concerning the perceptions in the marketplace about the economics of flash-based storage. You might find your answers to be quite revealing.
Four questions quickly come to mind:
How have the perceptions of the cost of flash storage changed in the marketplace?
What technology drivers are most affecting the cost of flash-based storage?
What business drivers are affecting customers’ perceptions about the cost of flash?
How does IBM FlashSystem translate these business and technology drivers into customer value?
Starting at a very basic component level, the adoption of flash in the consumer market—in everything from tablets to cell phones—is driving the ever declining cost of NAND flash chips.
But it is more than just that.
IBM is constantly increasing the reliability, efficiency and performance of the controllers that manage flash, further increasing its value while lowering its cost. Then consider the economic effects of today’s data reduction technology like IBM Real-time Compression. Depending on the workload, it can reduce the amount of physical storage required by up to five times. Suddenly 10 terabytes of FlashSystem operates in your system like 50 terabytes. Then, even when measured only by dollars per gigabyte, flash becomes very cost competitive with disk.
Additionally, as operational expenses such as power and cooling take a bigger bite out of IT budgets, more and more IT managers are starting to include operational cost dimensions in their storage purchase and deployment calculations. Savvy IT managers are thinking about total cost of ownership savings even beyond power and cooling. More are considering the savings to their application environment, either directly as a dollars-per-IOPS acquisition cost evaluation or factoring in operational savings like fewer servers and software licenses for the same application workload.
But, even though many CIOs, IT managers and business executives are adopting this more holistic view of calculating and assessing storage costs, we still see too many of our customers falling back to evaluating flash economics by only simple acquisition and ownership costs.
Consider the business drivers
Flash-conomics really asks us to consider the business drivers affecting the value of flash storage. Into the cost equation come the more strategic benefits of:
Staying ahead of your competition
The worth of a good customer experience to your bottom line
The advantages you gain by making faster, more informed business decisions
The costs of the risks you take when you don’t have the best possible fraud protection and data security.
IT infrastructure is becoming more and more entwined with today’s basic business operations. Storage isn’t about capacity, but rather it is playing a key role in the performance, reliability, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your overall IT infrastructure. When you begin to recognize the crucial role storage plays in the infrastructure that is driving your business, then the value you realize from FlashSystem skyrockets.
In any situation that making rapid, informed decisions matters, or when customers or employees are waiting for an answer, FlashSystem provides the best solution. It not only delivers business critical performance, but also the reliability and the operational efficiencies that your business needs. Right now with its built-in data reduction technology, even the basic dollars per terabyte costs of FlashSystem are lower than equivalent high performance disk arrays. Then add better performance to the equation and FlashSystem brings all the technology-based drivers of flash value together in one platform without compromising engineering.
If you’re only evaluating in terms of dollars per terabyte, FlashSystem is a good deal. And if anything else matters at all – low latency performance, business competitiveness, data security, operational efficiency, you name it – then IBM FlashSystem becomes a no-brainer of an investment for your business.
What are your thoughts?
*This article was originally published in the Smarter Computing Blog on 10 September 2014 by Kevin Powell*
http://ibmdigitalogue.com/flash-conomics-the-economics-of-flash-storage-beyond-speeds-and-feeds/
Flash-conomics: The economics of flash storage beyond speeds and feeds System, 10 September 2014 SHARE Kevin Powell Product Marketing Manager at IBM Storage today isn’t about speeds and feeds. And it isn’t about capacity. More and more we are hearing from customers that accessing and analyzing data…
