Fusion-io ION server-into-flash SAN
With reference to the Fusion-io ION story about turning servers into all-flash SAN arrays, the company's CEO Davd Flynn sent me this about cost/GB:
" ... one point that my have been lost, Fusion-io sources raw NAND chips, while EMC, Pure, Nimbus and others are buying SSD's from 3rd parties. Enterprise SSD's can cost 2x what RAW NAND does - and then these other companies have to put their markup on it. Fusion-io has effectively eliminated one layer of margin mark-up by the time the customer gets the solution.
Then there's the fact that Fusion-io doesn't have to mark up the box that goes around the flash by 3x to make margin on it - since the customer sources that directly themselves. Open platform means fewer mouths to feed in the value chain - means lower cost. By being vertically integrated from raw flash to software defined storage solution we change the underlying cost structure...
Net net is that even without dedupe ION is likely to cost customers less per GB."
Our story said that Pure Storage and the other all-flash array startups typically use deduplication and compression to increase the effective capacity beyond the raw flash capacity and so decrease their cost/GB.
So ... is David right; would a customer pay less for a, say, 15TB all-flash ION SAn using a server from Dell or HP fitted with ioMemory flash cards, than for a 15TB all-flash array from Kaminario, Pure Storage or some other vendor?