Three years ago this June on theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, one industry expert predicted that flash storage would be massively disruptive to the data center. Well, clearly that prediction came true, so we decided to welcome this prophet back to the show so he can use his psychic gifts to tell us what will be the next big thing in storage.

Jack Rondoni, VP of Storage Networking at Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., recounted his sage prediction of three years ago to Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls, cohosts of theCUBE. “I said that flash will be as disruptive in the data center as server virtualization,” Rondoni said, adding that nonbelievers need only go to YouTube to locate the video record.

Rondoni did not boast but did give evidence for the accuracy of his predictions. “If they don’t already have a massive amount of flash in their environment, they have plans to move their entire environment to flash,” he said.

He added that flash is not (pun intended) a mere flash in the pan. “It’s one of those few obvious value propositions that sticks in IT.”

Fiber channel and IP

Rondoni said that the debate over fiber channel versus IP ought to switch to a conversation about how best to combine the two.

“Any conversation that is, ‘Well, what about IP vs. FC?’ Wrong conversation. It’s not an either/or — it’s both,” he said.

The prophet Rondoni

Rondoni said we must stay alert, because storage is an area where innovation is not likely slowing down anytime soon. All of the “plumbing work and instrumentation work that we’re doing is going to have to be ready for NVMe [non-volatile memory express] over fabrics,” he said.

He then made his long-awaited prediction for the future: “Three or four years from now, NVMe is going to be as disruptive to the data center as all-flash was.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE