So who is using SSD caching? …

I’m currently in the land of the long white cloud (NZ) talking SSD caching technology to our distributors and partners over here. While going through this process an interesting point has time to light.

In the US and Europe it seems to be the large players (datacentres) who are interested in this technology … mainly aimed at reducing their footprint and doing more with less servers.

In my part of the world performance of a system is much more an issue than the actual number of servers needed to fulfill a customer requirement. Of course VMware is everywhere down here and customers are already using a lot less physical servers than in years gone by, but while VMware has produce some good outcomes for customers in consolidating their servers, it has added a problem … how to make the storage keep up with the processor and memory footprints of modern servers.

Here in lies the moral to the story. In my part of the world it’s the small, customer-focussed VAR/SI who is grabbing hold of this technology, not the big boys in town. The small player tends to be more focussed on solving a particular customer need rather than just putting together another model of server to add to their range. Very often servers are built to solve a particular customer need rather than just trying to make do with a standard model to fit a customer requirement.

This is where SSD caching is taking a strong foothold. While my US counterparts are having great success in their large datacentre customers (lucky sods) … I don’t have those sort of customers in such numbers down here. The small player is the one who is taking this technology and running with it.

So while it seems ironic that our marketing department and US sales team seem focussed on the big end of town, it’s the smaller, more agile VAR/SI who is making the most of this exciting technology to both fulfill customer needs and gain footholds on new customer spaces that they did not play in before.

It will be interesting to watch the development of this market as more and more people become aware of the advantages of SSD caching and look for innovative ways of making use of this technology.

Ciao
Neil