The next frontier on the data storage market is flash. With the advent of flash and the rush to take advantage of this new technology, companies have strived to make inroads into developing new ways to take advantage of the benefits that flash offers.

One such company, Nimble Storage, has announced the release of its adaptive flash product at the recent Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Launch. theCUBE was there for the announcement, and beforehand, SiliconANGLE founder John Furrier and Wikibon analyst Stu Miniman sat down and talked about the implications of the new technology’s release.

A storage solution to replace disc

With flash being touted as the next storage solution to replace disc, many storage solutions companies have a stake in the eventual outcome. Nimble has set itself up to potentially become a major player in the flash market. When asked what the flash market was about, Miniman responded, “It’s about performance, it’s about skill set, it’s about pricing. It’s about that software that makes up the component, and Nimble definitely has some differentiation in the way that they architect things.”

Furrier and Miniman further discussed how companies like Nimble are staying competitive in the ever-changing cloud market. Furrier brought up three factors that come into play: IOPs, throughput, and cost per gigabyte.

Architecturally, Miniman likes what Nimble has done by developing an adaptive flash array that can meet the needs of its customers better. He pointed out if flash can adapt to the changing needs of those who use it, it should provide the architecture to build things on in the future.

The importance of developing horizontally scalable products

According to Furrier, “The developers who are writing the software want to have turnkey infrastructure that can be horizontally scalable and also work with open source and other things. So, I see a great opportunity for the software side of the house. Certainly in the stores. Whoever can create that enablement for horizontally scalable DevOps, cloud, whatnot, that’s the winning formula.”

See Furrier and Miniman’s entire segment below.