Big innovations in storage were announced at the recent HGST, Inc. Press & Industry Analysts Briefing in San Francisco, California. theCUBE’s Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman were on hand to discuss the latest updates with Wikibon’s CTO and cofounder David Floyer.

Flash fabric, Helio technology, and the active archive platform

The attendees heard about new technologies in flash, capacity, and performance. In fact, the big three announcements that stood out to Floyer showcased the massive change the storage industry is currently undergoing.

“First of all there was the flash fabric … If you like Server SAN — the first entry into Server SAN — that is a very exciting drive,” Floyer said. “The second is the 10 terabyte announcement of the Helio technology — the helium-filled drives. The third is the active archive platform, very dense application of technologies and enclosures claiming to be five times denser than others. Obviously, time will tell, but three very interesting technologies in their attempt to revisit the storage of the future.”

Forecast on flash technology

When assessing the status of flash, Floyer believes we are at a tipping point where active data is moving rapidly toward flash. And because flash is not a “mechanical” technology, it can and is growing extremely fast.

“You saw announcements today of 3.2 terabytes,” Floyer explained. “And the drive sizes of flash in the future are going to even be bigger than the mechanical ones. So from a price, performance is coming down and price is roughly equivalent.”

Flash allows storage to be virtual for the first time, Floyer explained, because it has enough IOPS and bandwidth to extract the data in several ways. And he thinks HGST is being extremely sensible in doing two things: first, separating out flash from the drive (not going down the Seagate route) and second, doubling down on its ability to enter the flash market in a big way.

A transformational time

One main message at HGST: This is a transformational time as a result of the explosive growth in data. “The amount of data is growing massively,” Floyer stated. “It is growing from mobile. It is growing from the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. It is growing from all of those areas.”

HGST plans to continue differentiating itself from Seagate by delivering significantly more value.

See the entire segment on HGST’s market position, opportunities and transformation below: