I expect the CIO to prioritize and optimize the IT roadmap

Judy Bruner has been with SanDisk for almost a decade, holding the post of the chief financial officer and an executive vice president of administration at SanDisk. Bruner exclusivey chats with Dataquest about some of the trends in storage and about SanDisk. Excerpts

You've been the CFO of SanDisk since 2004. What do you consider as your biggest achievement till now?

I believe my biggest accomplishment has been strengthening the corporate business processes and the associated teams. This covers not just finance but also other corporate functions such as IT and legal. One of the most significant process improvements that we made was to implement SAP broadly across functions and geographies in one go-live event.

What are your expectations from a CIO?

I expect the CIO to be intimately involved with the business in determining how to improve the company's productivity across all functions.

I also expect the CIO to understand how all key processes intersect across the company and to have a strong knowledge of which process improvements are most critical to the company in achieving its objectives. This allows the CIO to prioritize and optimize the IT roadmap.

Is solid state drive (SSDs/flash storage) a growing market for you?

SSDs are increasingly used across the enterprise. Enterprises are deploying SSDs in notebook computers to speed up client computing performance, extend battery life and, extend the life of the computers as well. In addition, SSDs are also being deployed in the enterprise data centers to solve performance bottlenecks, decrease the data center footprint, decrease cooling requirements, and increase reliability.

Both of these trends are reducing the total cost of ownership for the enterprise, and thus we expect continued strong growth for SSDs in the enterprise.

How is SSD affecting the hard disk drive (HDD) memory market? What changes can we expect?

Flash memory based SSDs are increasingly becoming an attractive alternative to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) in IT applications due to their fast performance and strong reliability. SSDs can reduce the footprint and power consumption of data centers that serve the cloud, increase the reliability and performance of company issued laptops, and create an overall better computing experience.

SSDs will be a major growth driver for SanDisk over the coming years as consumer demand for thin, high-performance tablets and ultra-thin notebook computers is exploding. SSDs are key enablers of these popular mobile computing platforms due to their excellent combination of fast speed, small size, durability, mobility, and power efficiency.

What type of storage is more relevant to enterprises and why?

The growth in consumer and enterprise markets is driving demand for SSD-flash storage solutions. The mobile market continues to experience robust growth in feature phones, smartphones, and tablets. Within the PC ecosystems, innovation is unfolding in ultra thin notebooks, driving demand for NAND flash.

Could you give us a peek into the trends in this industry?

The first trend in the flash memory industry is the growing use of SSDs in enterprise data centers, in storage configurations, and with application servers. The increased performance, lower cooling requirements, smaller footprint, and overall lower cost of ownership make SSDs use in the enterprise data center very compelling.

Another key trend is the use of SSDs in client based systems. At a time when overall PC sales have been declining, the market is seeing growth in the sales of the thin and light computing devices that utilize SSDs. Flash memory is making these systems popular by making them thin, light, and very powerful with fast boot up speeds.

As SanDisk celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, it's a good time to remember how many changes in the technology industry have resulted from flash memory.