Pete Austin’s Blog

Last week at work, I sat down with a couple representatives from Intel to talk about the latest iteration of vPro technology and how it may fit into our infrastructure and SCCM (Microsoft System Center) management. Perhaps I’m just a little jaded from almost a decade in the industry but honestly, I was really underwhelmed by the presentation. And to make it worse, the part that any technologist really cares about – the demo – amounted to demonstrating that they could remotely power cycle a machine on the network. Color me unimpressed. Of course the technology allows for greater abilities but the demonstration was just lame. But all of this is just context to what I really want to talk about, solid state disk technology.

About half-way through the presentation one of the reps stated that a cornerstone of vPro technology is the improved power management of devices on the network. He then mentioned how they had seen even further benefits on Intel’s upcoming line of low-power solid state disks. In his opinion this made vPro technology even more compelling going forward as “hard drives are on their way out” and that “in ten yours you won’t even see hard drives in the marketplace”. Under different circumstances I would’ve called “bullshit” but I bit my tongue. Not too long ago I actually had this very conversation with my parents who were considering purchasing Seagate Technology (a hard drive manufacturer) stock (STX).

Let’s start by making one thing clear. Intel is a leader in the industry and knows how to build the best CPU’s on the planet. However, they need to learn to stick with what they’re good at. Their recent forays and trash-talk about entering the integrated graphics and solid state markets have done nothing but poke the chests of other heavyweight tech manufacturers such as Samsung, AMD, and Nvidia – all of whom proceeded to launch superior products that simply embarrassed Intel. So when a rep tries to impress me with, “we’ve got our own secret sauce to building solid state drives” and then offers a very thin argument for the obsolescence of hard drives, it just rubs me the wrong way. For the record, I find the notion that Intel will somehow eclipse Samsung in the development and production of flash memory highly suspect.

Global data storage requirements are greater than ever and there is skyrocketing demand in developing nations. If you ever question the exploding economic growth in developing markets just look at the price of oil. That is largely driven by explosive demand in new markets. Right now, and regardless of price, magnetic storage technology like that of hard drives is the only reasonable solution for implementations where capacity is a top priority. Flash storage enjoys the advantage in applications where size and speed are top priority. Some examples would be portable devices, consumer electronics, and of course laptops. However, in applications where you need a ton of capacity and proven reliability, (which every business requires) hard drive systems can be implemented for less than a quarter of the cost of an equivalent solid state system. In the ever-expanding business world the data center is core to operations and simply will not be entrusted to solid state disk technology any time soon.

Just remember one thing, as we evolve in our own technical abilities and in computers’ data processing abilities, the amount of data that we process globally is inextricably linked to a data infrastructure capable of storing it all somehow. The usefulness of data becomes almost null without a way to archive it. The companies that diversify their product lines to incorporate the best technologies at the best times will enjoy significant and sustained growth. The question of solid state or magnetic drive technology is not black-and-white. There’s room in the industry for not only these two, but other technologies that have yet to see the mainstream.