Craig Nunes, the VP of WW Marketing for HP Storage, and Mike Abram, manager of Datacenter Infrastructure at Alcoa, Inc., gave their perspectives on the transition to flash memory in an interview with theCUBE during HP Discover 2015.

Nunes said that in many ways, although the conversation centers around affordability, it’s important to remember the organization benefits that flash can provide.

“To really bring it onto the radar, the conversation with folks [is about] … the organizational productivity benefits that you pull out of a flash deployment, the problems you can solve, without … a bunch of your organization having to devote their lives to something you can solve in the technology,” Nunes said. And because flash makes the application experience even better, “It seems like everyone wins.”

All-flash and affordability

Are we at the tipping point? Almost, Nunes believes.

“Where we’re at today, we’re kind of on this tipping point, if you want to call it that, for this all-flash data point,” he said. “It’s really helping folks understand that an all-flash approach has an affordability aspect to it that we think … we’re looking at about $1.50 per usable gigabyte.”

Again, however, he says it’s about the endgame. “I think the real conversation and maybe the more important part of the conversation is what can it do for your organization? What can it do for your application users? And get that value out of it.”

Abram agrees. “I think our journey, it’s been an evolution, and we started typically where I think the majority of organizations start,” he said. “You have a refresh opportunity come up with a highly critical application where you need to drive performance from a business perspective. And as you do that refresh you look to put it on the fastest-performing infrastructure you can acquire at the time.”

Abram added that you then have unintended benefits and realize, “Wow! My backup window was just reduced by 90% … And it gets you thinking.” This leads many companies to make the full switch, even if they were hesitant at first.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of HP Discover Las Vegas 2015.