In their ongoing Discover 2013 coverage, John Furrier and Dave Vellante speak with Milan Shetti, VP and CTO for HP Storage. The three discuss Flash features, HPs modern architecture and what makes software defined storage so hot.

The three explore recurring questions associated with Flash, including: How can clients apply data one features on Flash without having to worry about endurance? And, given that performance and latency are not the end-all/be-all, how can it be made cost effective? The panelists agree that many people have been inserting flash in their existing architecture and it did not perform as well.

Vellante notes that HP storage has gained a lot of momentum on the notion of having a modern architecture. This perspective is interesting given that HP had a disk-based architecture, but is now harnessing Flash. According to Shetti, HP optimized a lot in terms of how the i/o stack works. There are over 500,000 lines of code in the software stack that are not needed in Flash. HP optimized its entire code pack to achieve the latency they get. Shetti adds, “It was easy for us to adopt flash because its more or less adjacent to what the service providers needed.”

Furrier concludes by asking, “Why is software defined storage so hot?” Shetti explains that software defined storage provides a bridge for users to transition from an internal to external storage model; that bridge never existed before.

Watch the full interview here.