In The Mind of a Flash Storage Buyer - Part 1

There are plenty of articles out there which document why businesses should buy all flash arrays, many are written by vendors or storage analysts. Very rarely have I seen one which was written by an end user within a buying business. In a trilogy of posts I want to explore some of the thoughts running through the mind of a flash buyer (this is not an exhaustive list). In part one, I look at thoughts of a buyer when they are deciding if flash storage is the right fit for their business.

 Do I really need flash?

“Only a tiny amount of my overall requirement is for performance so do I really need an all flash solution? I can’t see how a fast all flash array will help me outside of this requirement” 

In reality, only a small % of use cases actually require low microsecond latency performance, however these use cases have huge impacts on the business. So why should a buyer look at flash outside of this small requirement? Buyers should look at the additional benefits that low latency performance can deliver. For example, low latency solutions like flash enable an infrastructure to become more resource efficient. This can lead to a number of benefits such as reduction in servers and therefore lower licensing costs, greater consolidation especially in virtualised environments, higher productivity levels and more. In addition, if the price of a large flash array is comparable to the disk or tiered solution then why wouldn't a buyer consider looking at it. Therefore, a buyer should think outside just performance is only for faster applications and vendors need to help them understand these additional benefits.

Flash is just too expensive

“I would love to buy flash but I really can’t afford it”

The cost of flash is very important to many businesses who are cash constrained in the current economic climate. Out of all the benefits that flash technology can deliver, the price is still top of the list for many buyers. Flash has always been more expensive compared to disk however that gap is rapidly closing. It is still and will be for a number of years, more expensive than slow disks used for archiving data. However, no one buys slow SATA drives for their core business data. This is where flash, with inline data reduction technologies is now viable as a cost comparable solution to mid-enterprise disk or tiered arrays. Also think about the cost of licensing advanced data features, many large vendors charge per TB and that can dramatically increase of the cost of a legacy solution. So when looking at the price of flash, think about some of the other factors such as feature set licensing, data centre cost savings, software license savings etc. Vendors need to start understanding buyer requirements better and do more due diligence on the impact of features like data reduction, what the ‘real’ cost impact is and how does that compare to competing products.

There are too many technology choices today

“Flash, hyper-converged, hybrid, software-defined, cloud…– so many choices, I don’t know which is the right choice!”

There has never been so much choice of technologies to choose from. Gone are the days of simple and little choices - so buyers are asking 'is flash right for me? should I instead invest in some other technology?'. The many available options are confusing businesses who don’t know what to invest in next. Many of these technologies are relatively new so the larger, risk averse organisations are being careful not to choose something that will restrict them moving forward. Understanding your own requirements, having a future strategy and carrying out research is key. Know what you are trying to solve, where you see that solution in 3 to 5 years. It is important to understand the value of each of these technology choices against what you actually need. For example, small unimportant data sets can sit in the cloud while everything is on premise. Hyper-converged simplifies estate management but can introduce scalability constraints. Software-defined gives you more control but you have to manage a commodity hardware estate which may be less reliable or not very performant. Understanding your own requirements in detail can help you understand what the technology values mean to you. Bringing in an external agnostic specialist can be a great investment in making the right choices.

I would love to hear other opinions from buyers out there, what else is going through your mind when listening to vendors or trying to making decisions on what tech to invest it next.

Keep tuned for part two of "In the Mind of a Flash Buyer".