Scott predicts that while solid-state non-volatile memory in general will continue to transform the storage market, that non-volatile memory may not be limited to or even remain primarily NAND flash. Several other technologies are appearing in the market to vie for a place in the next generation of storage. Each of these has differences in how it handles data that will require changes in the architectures of the new all-flash startups as well as the traditional storage vendors. "We believe that with StoreOne we are well positioned to evolve to take full advantage of non-volatile memory, including these newer technologies," he said. The recent purchases by EMC and IBM in the flash storage area imply that they are not as sanguine about their existing architectures, he added. The Future of the HP-VMware Partnership He remains confident that HP's partnership with VMware will continue into the future despite EMC's ownership and the announcement that EMC executive Pat Gelsinger is taking over as VMware CEO. "VMware has managed to create valuable properties across the IT spectrum by maintaining a level playing field," he said. "It is in VMware's best interest to maintain that level playing field, and every evidence is that it will continue to do that. We will continue to partner with them." Virtual Arrays and Multiple Hypervisor Environments He predicts that the next step in storage will be the creation of virtual storage appliances, "storage arrays without the array," consisting of a variety of rich services built on industry-standard architectures that are storage hardware and hypervisor agnostic. HP, he says, is already doing that. "Our new appliances work on both VMware and [Microsoft] Hyper-V, and furthermore they can do that simultaneously in heterogeneous environments." This, he says, is important because the trend is toward multiple-hypervisor environments. For instance, Wikibon's own recently released survey of VMware users shows that a high percentage have at least one other hypervisor in house, either in test or production. Scott predicts that within 18-24 months, 80% of IT shops will have multiple hypervisors running, and the storage that will be central to those data-driven environments needs to run seamlessly over those hypervisors. "With our LeftHand heritage, we intend to be the leader in providing the abstraction layer in storage that can best support those multiple-hypervisor environments," he said. Read the full article, "3PAR Driving HP into the Data Infrastructure Era, Says David Scott" by BERT LATAMORE, here: http://servicesangle.com/blog/2012/08...