We were recently told that part of a CIO's responsibilities included building an organization that can keep an eye on the future as well as keep the lights on today… Keeping up with best practices and latest technologies… then deciding when and how to bring them into practice… Change too fast, or change too much too soon, operational performance suffers… too little or too slow, fall behind the competition…

Flash storage is the future. It's a not a question of if. It's a question of when.

Most people accept that flash is orders of magnitude faster than HDD. With the introduction of Flash Storage Platforms from Violin Memory, the complete suite of data protection services and data efficiency services that IT Professionals came to expect on legacy arrays are now available on purpose-built all-flash arrays… Now you can choose your entry point and optimize for extreme performance, primary storage, or entry level capacity. The Violin Flash Storage Platform has a product for each.

The time to move might be sooner than you think.

Many IT organizations have ongoing programs to refresh existing legacy HDD storage with all flash arrays. Some are out in the market for their second or third times… adding capacity and features… migrating workloads and data sets… consolidating storage footprints… leveraging staff resources into new, more productive tasks… future-proofing the organization against the anticipated 30-40% data growth coming in the near-term.

Will you want to stand up in front of the Board and explain why you went with decades-old HDD technology for your last storage refresh? Would it feel even less comfortable next quarter, next year, or three years from now?

While you're considering that, consider the recent experience of one CIO who began a flash storage deployment about six months ago. This is his story.

Why Change?
  • HDD-array-based performance deficit across mission critical applications
  • Complex, hard to manage, tiered array required outsourced management
  • Coming up for service/maintenance renewal
The Choice:
  • Violin 7300 Flash Storage Platform, after evaluating a series of three-letter vendors
  • It is very scalable and extremely easy to manage all arrays in one console
  • We were impressed by the benchmark results we saw and we are seeing those kinds of results in our environment today.
Impact on IT:
  • Lower initial purchase price that competitors for capacity and performance
  • No more 3rd party to manage our storage
  • Reduced footprint in our colo facilities
  • Great reduction on support/maintenance costs
Impact on the Business:
  • One of the 'lifeblood applications' used to take eight hours to run over night on the old array. When the data was migrated to Violin's 7300 Flash Storage Platform, run time when down to two hours. That meant if a problem occurred it could be fixed before the next workday … not have people sitting around, waiting for their paperwork, which happened with the old disk-based array and cost over $70K in lost productivity and overtime.
  • Shortly after the purchase of the Violin Arrays, the Violin customer described the acquisition of another company and the integration of the two IT operations. With Violin's strong support, and the performance of the product, the acquired company's IT operations were brought in-house, closing down the acquired company's outsourced IT operations, at a savings of about $1 million annually.

Consider whether the time is right for you to reset the economics of the data center, because if you're not doing it, your competition probably is.

It's time to get in touch with Violin and find out how we can help you Be Instrumental in your company's turn toward all-flash storage.

Download this week's third party thought leadership piece, 'Hardware First' from analyst firm Storage Switzerland for additional background that will help you be instrumental, and register for the chance to win a Jerry Rice autographed football at the same time.

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