 Okay, we're back live here in San Francisco. This is SiliconAngle.tv, SiliconAngle.com. The Cube, this is our flagship program. We go out to the events to extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconAngle.com, and I'm joined with my co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikimonde.org, and we're joined by Rich Peterson, who is the director of software marketing at Sandisk. Welcome to The Cube. Well, thanks very much. And you, we were talking off camera. You were recently acquired by Sandisk. You came from Flashsoft. That's correct. So we're going to talk about that. John, Flash, obviously taking the market by storm. We've written about it a lot on Wikimonde and SiliconAngle. We've covered the Flash memory summit. We've been deep on Flash in solid state. David, this is just the big innovation. Every technology revolution has an enabler, a disruptive enabler, and spinning disk has not been one of them. So we've been covering that. So my question is, is that tell us what's going on with you guys now? Sandisk, obviously everyone knows about the brand that's ever used, you know, taking a picture or seeing some of the cool tech they've had. And there's a variety of other enterprise solutions. So take us through some of what's not known and what you guys are doing is within Sandisk. That's a great question. Sandisk is well known as a leader, pioneering leader in Flash technology. But what a lot of people don't know about Sandisk is that it also has a very active, vibrant enterprise business oriented around Flash technology. Both as a developer of hardware solutions and also software solutions that leverage enterprise Flash in order to reduce IO latency. And this reduction in IO latency is one of the key enablers for increased performance and scalability for databases, enterprise applications and virtualization environments. So it's happening, you know, pretty fast. I mean, it started with consumer devices and now it's moving into the enterprise. Well, we're here at Oracle Open World. And Oracle is talking Flash. What's your angle on that? You know, Oracle is putting Flash in a lot of different places. What does that mean to you guys? That's obviously good news because it rises the tide. At the same time, Oracle is getting more vertically integrated with Flash. So talk about, you know, where you fit. That's an excellent question because one thing that's important to understand is that there are many different ways to apply Flash technology to the task of reducing IO latency. In some cases, the optimal approach is to approach the front end of the database itself. In other cases, implementations of Flash in storage architectures provide great benefits. Now our particular approach is to enable the Flash to act as a cache within the IO data path of the operating system itself. So whether you're running an Oracle database on Linux or something on Windows Server or even in a VM, you can accelerate the performance and scalability of the application by reducing the latency through the use of Flash technology as a server attached cache. So that's where we fit in the stack. Okay, and the point of management is you guys doing that management? Are you relying on, you know, the host to do that? Yes? Yes, yes, yes. Hey, yes and yes. So essentially, the Flash software appears to the operating system as a driver in the IO path between server and storage. So essentially we're transparent upward to the databases and applications and we're also transparent downward to the storage infrastructure. And this is extremely valuable to customers that want to deliver the benefits of Enterprise Flash but they don't want to re-architect their databases. They don't want to re-architect the storage investment that they've already made. So you're talking to SCSI protocol, for example, is that? Sure, yeah, we'll talk with, you know, we'll talk with any underlying storage. We can attach, we can talk to the Flash device via any attached interface, whether it's SATA, SAS, PCIe or even NVME. So we're very much transparent within the operating system both to, you know, the storage protocol as well as to the interface to the SSD. Okay, and so where do you see this whole space going? Will all active data sit on Flash? Is it going to be more aggressive than that? Will Flash replace spinning disk? Like it has in a lot of these devices? What's your vision there? Well, I'm still waiting for spinning disk to replace tape completely. So I think we've got a few more years of spinning disks in the Enterprise. Well, it's finally happening. Yeah, it's starting to, it really is. 2012, it's almost 2013, it's finally happening. But truthfully, you know, with the massive growth in data that enterprises are having to handle, spinning disks will be with us for a while. But one of the most important drivers for this adoption of Flash is the fact that we need to get access to larger amounts of data much more quickly. Whether we're talking about big data analytics, mobile applications, all of these new applications are placing demands on storage infrastructures that we couldn't have imagined a few years ago. And Flash technology can step up and deliver large volumes of data to those application requirements with the performance that we need to do business. Rich, what has Flash done in your opinion to the architecture of the Enterprise within the data center and within cloud, in particular? And two, how has that impacted some of the big legacy stuff like big sands and whatnot? Because, you know, obviously Flash can sit in a lot of different places, closer to the processors. Inside of that, we've got networking, software defined networking, all these great emerging trends. So obviously, Flash is the ingredient that's very cool, that sits in different spots. How has that changed the architecture? Well, it's changed it in a number of interesting ways. I think if you want to look at the development of Enterprise Flash and the Enterprise, two ways to look at it. One is the capacity and the performance steadily increasing just in terms of the hardware. But then, additionally, the fact that we're getting better and better at putting Flash where it delivers the greatest benefit. So initially, it was implemented as a tier in a storage system. Following that, we've come up with innovative technologies that put it on the sand. What we're doing now with technologies like FlashSofts is we've found a way to put the Flash right next to the CPU where it can deliver the data fastest. And that's really changed, I think, what servers are going to be looking like over the next several years. We're going to start thinking of servers in terms of how large a Flash-based cache can I put in to this hardware? And how can I best leverage it with my existing storage? One of the things that we emphasize is the ability to leverage existing storage investments because these are systems that aren't that old. They are very expensive. And there's a lot of policy and process that's baked into their implementation. So we want to be as non-disruptive as possible while being as innovative as possible. So let's talk about the customer problems that they solve, right? I mean, there's problems to solve and business to be done, as you mentioned, a lot of legacy investments. So what is the core problems that they're solving that you see? Is there like some, you know, things that bubble up to the top in almost every conversation? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I would say at the top of the heap is virtualization. Today, most organizations have picked the low-hanging fruit in virtualization and they're moving with a roadmap to increase their virtualization. And yet they're still looking at certain tier one systems that they're reluctant to consider virtualizing. And flash technology enables them to expand the scope of their thinking and look to virtualization in areas where previously they might not have imagined doing so. Secondarily is what we see people doing in terms of databases where they're working with very, very large amounts of data, they're looking at business analytics, they're looking at OLTP implementations where they're really increasing their expectations for performance, looking at batch jobs that can be brought down from 30 hours to under 10 hours, sometimes five or six hours, looking at response times dropping from seconds to milliseconds. That's what flash, that's how flash is raising expectations for what applications can do within the enterprise today. Tell the folks out there why Sandisk? Because there's a lot of noise in the marketplace, a lot of different vendors, enterprises, they said not well-known, relative to some of the other consumer brands. Why Sandisk? What are the reasons why people buy you guys and work with you? Oh, Sandisk is actually a very, very partner-oriented organization. So we kind of don't have a dog in many of these fights. You might say that, for example, to talk about the flash soft technology, even though Sandisk is a manufacturer of enterprise solid-state devices, our software technology is open to be used with solid-state technology from other vendors, whether you're talking about LSI, or FusionIO, or Virident. And so it's one way that you can see that as a large organization with a diversified portfolio, we're able to partner with vendors of storage systems, partner with vendors of servers, and also partner with other SSD makers as well. So we can say to the customer that you truly are our top priority, and your procurement decisions are your procurement decisions, and we will support that, whether we're talking about our hardware offerings or our software offerings. What's the technology status these days? So obviously flash is kind of continuing to grow, price points are going to drop, and this is kind of evolution, still kind of expensive relative to, well, it's all relatives, expensive. Look at the scheme of things, it pays for itself, depending on how you implement the architecture, which we've talked about in theCUBE many times, but the status of, what's next in the technology? What's around the corner that's going to continually improve the capability? Well, obviously capacities and performance characteristics are going to change. One of the things that I think a lot of people almost overlooked is the degree to which the longevity, the consistency, the reliability of these devices has improved radically. And this is an area where SanDisk has been a pioneering vendor on the hardware side. So really there's a lot of, I would say under the surface improvements in enterprise flash technology that maybe don't grab headlines in terms of millions of IOPS, but they really grab attention when the CIO is looking at the long-term value of his investment. I wonder if you could talk about the landscape a little bit. I mean, there's just the number of suppliers in this space is just exploding. You guys have been here from the beginning. I think you're probably the largest supplier, not out of the factory, but through the value chain, public company, very successful revenues and multi-billions, market cap of 10 billion. But you see as a plethora of companies, many are very niche-oriented focused solely in the enterprise. You guys have a very diversified business. You're in consumer, you're in the iPhone, now you're in the enterprise. Flashsoft brings another capability. What's the overall strategy of the company and relative to, say, a lot of these emerging companies that you see with great valuations or getting bought out by companies before they even have a product, for example? Right, right. Well, Sandisk is a company that has a great deal of experience and a great deal of expertise in-house. So, for example, Flashsoft became a part of Sandisk in that very process. We were shipping a product with a good customer base. We demonstrated, I think, some leadership in this technology area, and that's where the folks at Sandisk were able to execute on an acquisition strategy that made sense for them and made sense for us as an organization. And in particular, made sense for our customers. It really, the number of business partners and customers of ours that said, we're really glad to see you become a part of that organization because that's somebody we can do business with. They saw the depth of technical expertise, they saw the openness in terms of business strategy, and they saw the leadership at the corporate level. And so, there was a lot of, it really gave us a boost in terms of where we saw this technology going over the long term. A lot of people talk about that there's something else on the horizon other than Flash, you know? That if we had to choose a technology for the enterprise, we wouldn't have chosen Flash because you have to go through so many gymnastics to make sure that you don't lose data. At the same time, the compelling part about NAND is that it's in all these consumer devices so the price dropped dramatically. What is SanDisk's outlook on that? What's your point of view? Well, frankly, having a non-volatile memory that can be resident in the server is, I think, a very important innovation because it really gets storage capabilities ahead of the latency that's inherent in any storage area network. So, by bringing storage to the server with non-volatile memory technology, I think we've pioneered the first step in a new kind of architecture, an architecture that is better for virtual machine environments. It's better for large-scale database implementations and I think we're going to see both server and storage vendors aggressively supporting this innovation. So, I'm a very strong proponent of non-volatile flash memory in the server. I think that's really the future. Yeah, I think we would generally agree with that. That, at least for all active data, just makes sense to put on the flash and actually the cost from a transaction standpoint is actually lower than on spinning disk. What about flash going away in favor of some future technology, memory store, something like that? Can those technologies compete with the massive volumes of the consumer business or is flash here to stay for the foreseeable future? Actually, I'm going to beg the question, I'm afraid, because I'm a software guy. And what I can say is that- You don't care. Well, in a way, there's always going to be something faster. There's always going to be a tier that's faster than the previous tier. And there's always going to be a requirement for the intelligence to understand where the data is best served. And from our perspective, that's just a very bright future. So, follow up on a software question. So, it seems like the big software innovation is being able to actually access and act upon the metadata. That's right. So, talk about that a little bit. Controls that metadata, how does that shift and what does that mean for your business? That's an important question. And it's one of the issues that again, when I talk about innovations that are below the surface, that's one of them. Because metadata management is really something that, if done poorly, can overload systems. So, you're basically going to be stealing from Peter to pay Paul. In order to accelerate your storage I.O., you may be stealing resources away from system memory and in-memory caching capabilities. So- Pushing the bottleneck around. Exactly, exactly. So, it's extremely important when you're looking at a storage technology, you have to make sure that metadata management is implemented appropriately. That's one of the things that really, the data scientists on the FlashSoft team have made a particular point of focus. That our footprint, if you will, in the server is extremely light. So that, if you don't mind me bringing up a few data points. Yes, yeah. Love it. In our current VMware product, the maximum size of the SSD-based cache can be two terabytes. And that two terabyte cache can be managed with 140 megabytes of system memory. So, it's a very light metadata footprint in order to manage an extremely large cache of data. And there are some special architectural developments that we put into place in order to be able to do that. But I think when you look ahead into the future, that as data grows, obviously metadata is going to grow as well. And the question is, are we developing technologies that implement metadata management for maximum efficiency? Because that's really one of the, I think one of the subtle differences that will come to the fore when you're talking about the pros and cons of different approaches to solving this issue of IO latency. Well, if you get it right, the performance impact is going to be enormous. But so, we talked about VMware. Recently, VMware put Pat Gelsinger in charge. Yes. He brings a hardware sort of background, systems background, really. And a lot of experience with his former company EMC is David Fleur, our David Fleur who wrote that where they're probably headed is to basically try to control the entire stack in the metadata in particular, saying, okay, we own the protocols, you got to play with us. How do you see that as a software supplier? Can you, where do you compete long-term? Do you just say, okay, fine, we'll participate in whatever protocols we have to interact with and add value through our efficiency and our algorithms. What's the long-term prognosis for you guys in that regard? That's a difficult question to answer directly because I honestly don't have a crystal ball. Our relationship with VMware has been a very strong one. We've been a VMware partner from the beginning. And one of the things that has impressed us the most is when you look at VMware's partner ecosystem, it is very robust. And I think it's very robust, not by accident, but by a dedicated effort to support its partners and to involve them in the innovations that it brings to its customers. So I obviously can't comment or speculate in any way, one way or the other, as to what decisions Pat Gelsinger may make. But as a company, I think VMware got here to the point where it is through strong partnerships with storage vendors, server vendors, software developers, and encouraging innovation in its ecosystem. So I'm not really skeptical, I'm much more optimistic. So said another way, you don't see VMware or EMC its owner sub-optimizing the performance of its long-term vision to maybe prop up VF cash or something like that. Rather, you think that the ecosystem will generate a lot more value for obviously the industry, but also VMware itself. Very much so. I think VF cash really brought to the fore the requirement for server resident, non-volatile memory, specifically for the purpose of improving the performance and scalability of virtualization environments. So when a large vendor like EMC brings a technology like that to its customers and says, this is how we see the future, to some degree that raises the awareness among the customers of EMC's products, of all products, to the importance of bringing non-volatile memory into the server. Believe me, prior to that announcement, there were a great number of skeptics about bringing what was considered a storage technology to the server tier. So to some degree it's done us a service. So we're getting close on time here, but I want to get you to comment on what we have been following as the hottest trend since VMware bought Nacira was software-defined networking or network virtualization or software-led infrastructure or software-defined data center. Whatever the marketing guy's going to try to put on this mega trend, that's pretty relevant. You're talking about software now at the network layer, there's some virtualization magic in there. This is only going to help proliferate more cash. So what's your take on this? Take one, the direction, state of the technology, and its path? Well, if I could speculate slightly. Go ahead. I would say that one of the things to keep in mind is caching technology observes the IO behavior in a server and storage system. And in doing so, we always think of, well, what does it do with that information? Well, it simply uses that information to assign hot data to the appropriate tier of the stack, if you will. But what else might we do with that information in terms of optimizing the way our data centers operate? And that's a question. Routes, state information? There are many, yeah, exactly. There are many different things we could do. So opportunities are all over the place. There are incredible opportunities because I think over the long term, this flash-based caching technology is thought of only in terms of what can it do for performance and scalability. But keep in mind, it is generating a lot of information that we may be able to do something useful with. You know, you mentioned the word policy, people think about political policy and, you know, but now you have policy-based networking, policy-based storage. Everything's policy-based that requires decision-making, dynamic information, and software is the key. So we are obviously bullish on software-defined networking, software-defined data center, all of the above. So I agree, I think it's a great opportunity. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, really appreciate it. This is Oracle Open World. We are here live at theCUBE, our flagship program, go out to the event, extract the signal from the noise. Rich, thanks so much. We'll be right back with our next guest. We'll see you after this short break.