Making money from enterprise-class SSDs

Schneider: The time is ripe for VAR interest in SSDs

Flash-based storage devices are quite common in laptops but not in the datacentre, even though many vendors have released solid-state drive (SSD) technology for their RAID systems.

Yet enterprise-class solid state storage can be beneficial if deployed in the right way for the right purpose, so resellers and distributors should get in there before their competitors.

Compared to hard-disk drives (HDDs), SSDs have a smaller footprint, consume less energy per gigabyte and require little cooling; the lack of moving parts also eliminates the issues associated with rotational vibrations.

And of course they are faster. So how can the channel turn this technology into profits?

You can apply your knowledge of HDD sales to SSDs without spending time learning a new approach.

Disk technology evolves so rapidly that every three years or so IT managers tend to replace their disks, and this is an easy way into an account.

Replacing many HDDs with a few SSDs may offer benefits such as additional speed, capacity and energy efficiency, especially for customers relying on real-time data processing and database applications.

SSDs are mainly deployed to increase performance - that's the number one driver - although their green credentials are also strong.

However, you should never try to replace all the storage in a datacentre with SSDs. This simply would not work; solid state storage and HDD work together.

Often a combined solution will be the most cost-effective and offer the best performance for the different types of data and applications present in a company.

While it is safe to say that SSDs will not replace traditional HDD at least in the short term - partly because their price and capacity ratio is still higher - they are becoming an important storage tier alongside traditional disk and tape.

In addition, they are an effective alternative to hard disks in applications with high input/output operations per second requirements such as databases. In these scenarios, SSDs may be even cheaper than traditional disks.

Any reseller looking to close an SSD deal should make sure they understand the real cost of storage for any given prospect. That means not only acquisition costs but maintenance costs, upgrading costs, and the like.

Then they need to build a business case where solid state storage can fit better than any other technology in the prospect's environment.

This is fairly easy if the features and benefits of SSD are well understood. Training companies, associations and analysts are all sources of vendor-independent information and can help you get closer to your next SSD sale.

Marcus Schneider is director of SNIA Europe