Organizations amass profuse amounts of data these days, ranging from website traffic metrics to online customer surveys. Collectively, AI, IoT and every technology in between has begun hyper-driving data growth at warp speeds. What can mid-sized businesses with a limited IT ticket do to keep up with the workload pressures that data volumes place upon old fashioned storage systems? IBM’s Flash Storage is the virtualization answer to this burning question.

Flash storage uses a Solid-State Drive (SSD) with flash memory capabilities for continuous storage. And since Flash storage is a spin-free opportune to traditional disk hardware, vulnerability to extreme external wear-and-tear dissolves. Flash arrays can come in SSDs that perform all data storage functions with minimal footprints or a cost-friendly hybrid version that combines numerous flash drives for the major data crunching and hard disk support for those files you rarely need. Automatic continuous monitors break down hybrid Flash storage systems into tiers of “hot” data that is more frequently accessed versus “cold” data that’s less active and stored accordingly as such. Saving the time it takes IT engineers to designate data tiers may be motivation enough to switch to a Flash system.

Flash storage achieves 2x the I/O response rate by pulling data directly from a semiconductor instead of disks. Typical hard-drive storage takes hundreds of input-output operations per second (IOPS), while its Flash storage counterpart is responsive within hundreds of thousandths of a second. It compresses data in real-time, allowing for 5x the data within the same location. The manual push and pull of data in the SAN-controlled environment becomes streamlined with a LUN redirect. All proceeding input-output is automatically directed.

Minute IT budgets at mid-sized organizations make storage constraints seemingly impossible to surmount. Flash storage adds flexibility to companies with little cash in the department for housing enterprise-like amounts of data. Rather than relying on time-consuming code-fixes or cost-devouring server expansions, Flash Storage can outperform HDD-based systems by a long shot, and for less than a pretty penny. Price of Flash technology is falling as its capacity improves. A good sign that your medium-sized corporation can afford it.

IBM’s Flash storage technology requires 40% less energy to do 4x the CPU usage on application servers, cause for your IT department to do a dance of joy. And you can bet your bottom dollar that saving an average of 30% in licensed software fees will ramp up excitement from the company bookkeepers.

Find out more information by reading the Flash Forward: Making Flash Storage a Reality for the Mid-Sized Business White Paper and take data storage into the future, and beyond.