One of the biggest names in enterprise flash-based storage is one you see regularly but don’t think about: SanDisk.
SanDisk Corp. has been known for years for SD and CompactFlash cards in smart phones and digital cameras but a report in Forbes notes that it also has a line of solid state SAS and SATA drives as well.
The column, written by a contributor from Trefis.com, which estimates that 30 per cent of the company’s valuation comes from business flash sales.
Its drives, however, aren’t its only weapon. SanDisk also makes the Flashsoft caching software, which enables a standard SSD to be used as a high-speed caching memory for enterprise-level storage devices.
The column notes that Flashsoft would be appreciated by organizations looking to switch from spinning to flash drives because it will help speed data migration.
The column also notes that Flashsoft’s advantage is only in reading data, not writing it. Infrequently accessed data may also not benefit much.
Still, it’s a product that can be evaluated by IT staff.
The company has a number of enterprise products. In January SanDisk said its ULLtraDIMM SSD, which snapped into DIMM slots, is being certified by server makers. Flash RAM would make ultra-low latency in business applications and result in improved application response times, the company said in systems that need extremely fast storage, such as High-Frequency Trading (HFT), VDI, transaction processing, virtualization and cloud computing.