Flash-based storage solutions, which have become popular only a couple of years ago, is storming into the over 20-year-old server storage market and is at present worth $14 billion. Cashing in on this market, which is passing through a disruptive phase - a once in a 25-year phenomenon - are both established players like LSI who expect to see 200% growth is flash storage solution sales and startups like Virident whose revenues have been doubling every year. Another player, NetApp too has predicted that 2013 "will be a milestone year for all-flash arrays".

Besides travel portals and base stations, this technology would also step up the efficiencies of ecommerce websites and help in mobile payments. Virident is working with TCS to customize flash storage system to help financial transactions.

Virident's CTO and co-founder Vijay Karamcheti showed this reporter a sample of this solution which is the size of a child's pencil box but with a capacity of 2 terabytes. Waving this small gadget, he says: "This device delivers the performance equivalent to 1,000 disk drives which traditional server providers install. Because of its small size, the power consumed is just 25 watts compared to 3-4 kilowatts consumed by traditional storage solutions."

When a user opens a portal and requests particular information, the query is relayed to the server where this request is broken down into individual operations against bits of information. These bits of information have to be retrieved and processed and the responses have to be relayed back to the user. It is this function of the server which is being taken over by flash memory based solutions, explains Karamcheti.

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