No question about it: All-flash arrays (AFAs) offer enterprises a variety of advantages over traditional disk storage — starting with the ease of making the switch.

Sharks Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of the San Jose Sharks hockey team, found out just how quickly the shift from disk to AFAs can be accomplished. The organization’s IT team easily replaced a disk array with an AFA from Pure Storage, an all-flash enterprise storage company based in Mountain View, California.

“Another guy and I installed it,” recalls Uy Ut, the IT director for Shark Sports & Entertainment. “We racked and stacked it and got it up and running within a day.” That kind of capability allows IT departments to meet demand quickly, rather than slogging through the multiple steps required to add traditional storage arrays.

AFAs offer plenty of other benefits as well. They can:

• Enable unprecedented data-mobility speeds, allowing data to be shared and accessed across functions.
• Prevent spikes in latency as more users access the data.
• Enable organizations to easily move away from traditional disk storage.
• Free IT managers to move staff off low-value, low-margin assignments involved with “babysitting” storage, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities.

• Support faster, even real time, analytics — which, in turn, creates new decision-making power and business opportunities.
• Reduce replacement costs.
• Contribute to the greening of the data center by significantly reducing the heat and physical footprint required for traditional arrays while eliminating ambient noise and vibration.
• Ultimately, increase competitive advantage by speeding up time-to-market for data-driven businesses and providing better, faster service to users. 
  
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