A: There is definitely value and space for SSDs in the enterprise market. The superior performance of the SSDs is most visible, and the faster read rate that it offers in comparison to the traditional hard disk drive (HDD) is another great differentiator that works in favour of SSDs. SSDs also consume lesser power compared to the traditional drives. However, HDDs will continue to hold the bulk of the storage market in the near future, as there are a few issues to be resolved before SSDs go mainstream.

A: I personally feel that SSDs, rather than competing, will complement HDDs; it will enhance storage architecture. Flash memory will not really replace the traditional memory in the next three to five years. The main reason for this is the cost of the SSD technology. Another major reason is the high investment required by the enterprises. We are talking about petabytes of data. We also need to keep in mind that storage requirements are application-specific. Also, SSD applies to Tier-Zero, and it is effective for those apps. Moreover, hard drives based on DRAM technology costs much lesser. So, it’s almost impossible for the flash industry to replace the hard disk drives this point of time.

A: Cost is bound to come down. There is no question about that. There have been several instances of price erosion in the industry. Historically, the flash memory business has been a volatile one. While price fluctuation has been a norm in short-term business, the overall trend in pricing trend has been southbound. The question is how quickly the price will erode. Whether the prices erode by 30 or 40 percent in the next 1-2 years is anybody’s guess. Two years ago, the price erosion in flash memory market was very steep, and there was a lot of hype around SSD taking over the traditional drive market. However, in the last six months, the prices have bucked the trend.

A: I would disagree on that. There has not been any significant increase of the SSD technology in the notebook space. In fact, the trend is downward as compared to what it was two years ago. Price points are not falling in line with industry expectations. Also, the performance has been below par. There have been a lot of issues on the quality front. When people pay a higher price, they expect a better quality product. When you add all these factors together,  it deters the adoption of the SSD in the industry.

A: Frankly, we have not faced any such objection from our customers. SSDs largely gets criticised for its high cost. The offerings do not justify the cost. The biggest of all issues is quality. Earlier there were significant quality issues, but that again has significantly come down.

A: This is a question more suitable for the manufacturers of flash memory. They are the ones who own the technology. These semiconductor players are working hard to increase the capacity. Their aim is to increase capacity and lower the cost at the same time. Their plan was to increase the capacity by 30 percent every year, thereby making SSDs more competitive.

A: Pulsar is the first in the range of products that we plan to launch in the flash-based SSD space. We have 30 years of experience with the enterprise customers and our advantage lies in our understanding of the customer. There are over 90 SSD manufacturers worldwide today, but most of them are consumer-based companies that have very little or no experience in the enterprise space. In our case, we have collaborated with the enterprise customers to understand what they want and designed our next generation SSD products.

sana.khan@9dot9.in