The transition away from disk grows day by day with increasing demand from major players, thanks to the faster speed and greater capabilities of flash memory. Disk may not be dead, but it looks it compared to the growing demand for flash memory. But what makes flash so interesting?

“Lower latency,” said Mike Workman, senior VP of Oracle flash storage systems, who spoke with John Furrier and Dave Vellante, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during an interview at Oracle OpenWorld 2015.

Hooked on flash

The industry is “hooked on flash,” explained Workman, who said Oracle had built “the fastest flash storage system” for themselves, by themselves, and as a result it worked extremely well for them.

One of the problems encountered, however, was actually acquiring the flash memory, which can’t be produced fast enough to meet demand. Workman speculated that even with this increased demand, the price would continue to fall. Additionally, Workman estimated that the industry would be “10:1” in flash-to-disk ratio for data storage.

Speed and innovation

Flash hasn’t been a “disruptive” technology, according to Workman, and the high adoption rates support that. The result of the lowering of latency has resulted in increased amount of innovation around it. Workman said that when ecosystems are built around this technology, it’s impossible to go back. The ecosystem becomes reliant as systems are “built around” flash.

In a security example, the Oracle software stack has encryption that can be turned off and on by an administrator at the hardware level that is loss-less with regard to performance. This encryption occurs regardless of any other vertical part of the stack so data is always remaining secure.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE