Ever throw a rock into a still pond and watch the ripples from the impact? It is fascinating to see the effects of an object entering a placid body of water. It is interesting how the pond will always gravitate towards the restful and peaceful state it once was. This is called the “Equilibrium” or a “state of balance”. Equilibrium is often used in the context of economics, chemistry and physics, but it can also be applied to the technology industry.

As I have written in past blogs about disruptive technologies, these disruptions are the things we live for as techno-junkies. The disruptive part of solid state drives is the affordability factor. They are growing in capacity and the cost-per-GB is rivaling the traditional spinning disk industry. Adoption by the masses is going to determine the disruption. The faster the adoption, the bigger the disruption. If you look at all of the storage vendors out there, all-flash (ssd) arrays are being sold and overtaking sales of traditional spinning and hybrid systems. New industries and use cases have been enabled by this disruption that has taken place and the rippling effect of this disruption will elevate and innovate new industries when gravitating towards the new equilibrium.

Take for example, the invention of the car. The car was first invented as a basic mode of transportation. As time progressed, the car was transformed into other vehicles with different applications. Trucks and goods transportation emerged; Then the convertible and racing versions spurned an entirely new lifestyle. The applications are exciting and innovative. The SSD industry is now in its prime and is creating new applications and enabling an entirely new era. Here are some examples:

Big Data
Big Data is data mining on steroids. It is term used for the ability to ingest large amounts of data to index and analyze with flexibility to manipulate at will. The key here is the speed that the manipulation can happen. New applications and services that were not available before is now possible. Some examples of these services are: Identity theft detection, fraud analysis, bio research and national security.

IoT
SSDs have enabled a whole new IoT industry. IoT v2. Things like smart thermostats, robotics, automated vacuum cleaners, smart buildings and 4k cameras are possible due to the footprint of these devices that utilize a smaller form of solid state storage. This new breed of technology, in the wrong hands can also do much damage. Thieves have found ways to attach IoT devices to skim and survey areas to collect information on how to better strategize hacking attacks and to disrupt lives.

Mobility
Having SSD storage allows us to go mobile, not just in our smartphones, but in many different ways. The military application of having an entire mobile datacenter in a Hummer or Jeep is a reality. Real-time, battlefield data collection and servers that live in backpacks gives an advantage in warfare. Disaster recovery tractor trailer datacenters are optimized and enabled, especially in a world that is increasingly growing more and more volatile. Drones, robotics and vehicles are adding features with more abilities. Less dependencies to a central office enables a fleet of devices that are independent yet coordinate in a “swarm-like” approach to achieve objectives faster and more effectively.

The last chapter for spinning disk
I have written in past posts that the SSDs will someday render that rotating traditional spinning disk industry obsolete. That day is fast approaching as it has been eroding into the sales of spinning disk for a while now. 15k and 10k drives are already phased out, and the 7.2k drives still have some life left. The burning question is, when will the 7.2k drives finally go away…
With SSD capacities at over 16TB in a 2.5” form factor available today and the 32TB drive on the horizon, it is the extinction of the 7.2k drive is soon to come. The 7.2k drive is a great drive for capacity, but the problem is that RAID rebuild time is horrendous. A typical 2TB drive takes a significant time to rebuild and the window of exposure to data loss is greatly increased, even at RAID 6 (See my “Perfect Storm” blog for more information). So even as capacity increases, the rebuilt factor alone is attractive to move to high capacity SSD drives.