Features

A FLASHY OUTLOOK

Published

10 years ago

June 14, 2015

admin

Updated : August 3, 2014 00:15 am,
By Editor

Flash continues to gain traction throughout the storage landscape as the technology removes several bottlenecks of I/O performance

Flash storage in the enterprise segment is gaining ground for very obvious reasons. Reduced costs of Flash memory are making it conceivable to have more data stored on Flash arrays. Several bottlenecks in traditional enterprise data center storage have caused an acceleration towards flash storage arrays as a general trend in data centers globally. Leading vendors including EMC, Hitachi, IBM and so on have added flash drives to their existing arrays.

With application performance and availability top priority for Businesses, Flash helps deliver reduced data processing times and faster application service uptime. Keeping more active content on SSD arrays helps retrieve and deliver that data much faster. This is more in the case of critical applications that need high IOPS (Input /Output Operations Per Second) storage performance. Virtualization and demands of cloud computing are further accentuating the need for Flash storage arrays in enterprise data centers.

According to Pure Storage, a vendor focused on enterprise storage Technologies, there are similar trends in all regions of its business including MEA and therefore a growing demand for Flash arrays. The company’s distributor in the region, Global Distribution FZE has already commenced Partner recruitment and enablement, both Technical and Sales.

Steven Rose VP EMEA Pure Storage says, “In the virtualized datacenter, it is now commonly I/O performance that limits server consolidation ratios, not CPU or memory. These bottlenecks can affect customer satisfaction and slow down business processes. Further, Virtualization has the effect of multiplexing multiple logical workloads across a single physical I/O path. The greater the consolidation achieved through virtualization, the more randomized the physical I/O requests become. And random I/O is the Achilles heel of the rotational disk drive, because seek and rotational latency dominate transfer times 20 to 1.”

While Virtualization randomizes I/O as a variety of IO workloads are run together against the storage stack, the legacy storage based on traditional HDDs is mostly designed for sequential I/O. When a multitude of applications and services are competing against the resources of a spinning disk storage array the response times gets higher and higher and the disk array struggles to keep up as result of bottlenecks caused by the disk contention.

Christian Putz, Vice President-EMEA Channel Sales at Violin Memory, a leading provider of all-flash storage arrays and appliances delivering application solutions for the enterprise says, “Flash technology allows to run random workloads without having backend contention, and specifically speaking, the Violin Memory Flash technology provides sustained, predictable and sub-milisecond latencies for any kind of random workload (even with a huge component of writes). With Violin Memory Flash technology running mixed workloads results in no I/O penalty and allows to fully virtualize business critical applications, sustain high performance for all virtualized databases and applications and fully adopt VDI deployments because of an increased VDIs/core ratio. Last but not least, Violin Memory Flash technology dramatically reduces the impact of overcommitting resources, which typically occurs in this space, and allows to even run more VMs per host with low latency storage.”

According to Steven, while the demand for IOPS is growing, the supply is actually shrinking because the I/O rate to a single hard drive has been roughly constant while the capacity of a hard drive doubles every 18 months or so. This means that their performance per GB is actually declining. Therefore Flash is poised to have a disruptive effect on the enterprise storage market by applying solid state storage to tier 1 applications in the data center.

He adds, “A solid state storage solution based on flash removes these bottlenecks because it has no seek time, no rotational latency, and is equally fast on random workloads as on sequential ones, he says. Flash can accelerate virtual server and desktop deployments while affording higher consolidation and greater efficiency. Flash can also accelerate SQL and NoSQL workloads without partitioning or changes to the application. With flash memory, any block of data can be fetched in nearly constant time. This means that applications can be designed to expect sub-millisecond latency no matter what the I/O stream (random or sequential) or data distribution. Also, Solid state storage uses 10x less power and space than rotational hard drives, allowing you to substantially expand capacity in place. Further, with all flash arrays, customers spend much less time planning and tuning their arrays to remove bottlenecks.”

Flash all the way

Vendors are delivering hybrid arrays that include Flash and hard drives as well as all flash arrays which contain multiple flash memory drives instead of hard disk drives. Industry experts suggest that deployments must take into account use case scenarios. For instance, typical application workloads will see a considerable improvement in performance as well as savings in power, cooling etc with marginal inclusion of flash technology. Therefore, the hybrid approach works out as a viable option to accelerate workload performance. However, there are also application scenarios that demand dramatic improvements in response-time performance (latency) or high IOPS which are well taken care of all Flash array options.

All-flash arrays have been designed from the ground up to work with flash media unlike traditional arrays that have been built to work with the relatively slower spinning hard drives.

Christian says, “All Flash is one of the fastest growing markets in IT infrastructure. Nowadays, real-time data access and operational efficiency are the new norms and IT forces are starting to drive a transformation of the datacenter pushed by the demands of Business Critical Applications, full Enterprise Virtualization adoption, Data analytics, etc. “

He adds, “As Flash storage is a proven and mature technology and we are seeing Tier 1 apps and virtualization driving adoption of flash arrays. VDI, Transactional databases, Data analytics, ERPs, and Cloud initiatives are being moved towards an All-Flash storage to make real-time data access and operational efficiency become a reality: a tremendous boost in performance with dramatically reduced response times allows not only guaranteeing the future business growth pace, but it also provides higher consolidation ratios, to be able to fully embrace business critical application virtualisation, to reduce over-provisioning, to reduce licensing costs by increasing compute node utilization, and an impressive datacenter footprint reduction.”

A great example of the impact of Flash instead of legacy hard disk drives is in a Virtual Desktop environment. According to Pure Storage, one of the biggest challenges VDI presents to storage is the variable and spikey nature of IO requirements throughout the day. Typical use is write-heavy (often 80/20), but boot storms and anti-virus scans introduce huge read spikes. Overnight maintenance tasks (patches, recomposes) introduce even more heavy write bursts. You need storage that keeps up with it all without sacrificing end-user experience the way a caching solution can. This is another great example of where flash really outpaces hard disk drive based hybrid arrays.

Steven elaborates, “Many VDI pilots go well– until it is time to scale-up the deployment and move into production. That’s where too often deployments hit the IO wall – exceeding the IO capabilities of traditional disk storage and requiring expensive additional storage purchases which blow the VDI ROI case. Pure Storage scales seamlessly from pilot of a few hundred to 1,000s of users, all with non-disruptive incremental capacity and resiliency expansion. If all the benefits of VDI (security, consolidation for managent, etc.) can meet or exceed the performance of local laptop performance, then more and more customers will consider to move to Virtual Desktop.”

Salil Dighe, the CEO at Meta Byte Technologies, a regional partner for FusionIO, that was recently acquired by SanDisk claims that the region has been slow and cautious in its adoption of Flash storage as they haven’t seen significant gains from traditional Flash storage options available from different vendors.

He says, “The Middle East region is a followers market. The other parts of the world have already tried to utilize flash storage arrays and have not seen much benefit in terms of performance increase or IOPS. For the investments vs performance the gains are minimal hence now they are turning towards what is known as Flash on PCIe. One such product is FusionIO which seems to turn heads and provides significant throughput in terms of IOPS. Today many of the customers prefer FusionIO due to its flexibility in supporting various scenarios be it increasing the IOPS on a standard tier1 server to server virtualization or to provide significantly high VDI and VM densities on the same servers.“

PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) based solid-state storage has better performance than server-based SATA, SAS or Fibre Channel (FC) solid-state drives because of the direct connections.

He adds, “If you are using a disk controller to write on hard drives whether flash or non-flash the bottle neck is still the controller. The difference can only be significant if you use Flash as a memory tier. FusionIO uses Flash memory in its best suited architecture that is flash on PCIe, meaning CPU has faster access to data. As a result the CPU is efficiently utilized and can process many more operations or support more connections.”

The transition in effect

The transition from to flash arrays is bound to accelerate. This would suit the growing virtualized environments as Flash helps customers eliminate bottlenecks of applications delivery in virtual environments. So will hard disk drives have a place in the data centres in the long term?

Responding to that question, Steven says, “In some areas such as deep archive, or areas where performance isn’t a requirement, then hard disks may be here to stay for some period of time. But with the pace of innovation and focus on the flash industry, its anyone’s guess as to how soon even large footprint slow hard disk drives might be replaced by SSD(solid state drives). Consider that in early 2014 the standard Enterprise All flash array SSD was 512GB and by the beginning of 2015 this could be 2TB per SSD and you can see why we could be rid of hard disk drives much faster than most Enterprises anticipate. Therefore we recommend highly that all customers when making their storage refresh plans consider the benefits of an All-flash approach to storage.”

Combining the speed of flash SSDs with the capacity of HDDs has enabled faster access to hot data, while keeping cold data that is not critically needed on high-capacity HDDs. The Flash manufacturers are emphatic that the trend is bound to accelerate.

“We clearly see flash memory as the Tier-1 storage for the enterprise datacenter, as it needs to be offer the highest sustained performance with the lowest possible latency while keeping the lowest cost per I/O. And this is actually starting to be a reality for Violin Memory customers. Traditional hard disk based storage will be still the preferred solution for reference data as it needs to be capacity optimised and needs to offer the lowest possible cost per GB (at the expense of inducing a high cost per I/O),” says Christian.

According to him, the cost benefits of Traditional disk based storage needs to be relooked as traditional disk storage offers the best possible cost per GB but the worst $/Transaction ratio compared to Flash. So price and cost is still a concern when all the variables are not properly set into the equation.

He adds, “Nevertheless, Flash storage is evolving very fast and the fact is that Violin Memory´s technology is even exceeding Moore´s law: flash density and performance is doubling every ~16 months.

Violin Memory´s unique intellectual property is leading the market by continuously developing the next generation of flash technology. This will guarantee continuing the same pace of doubling or even quadrupling the capacity and performance, and when combined with additional data efficiency mechanisms like compression and de-duplication this results in many PBs of Flash with dozens of millions of IOPS per Rack with a lower CAPEX/GB than performance disk. “

According to Dighe, Cost is definitely a big concern and a bottleneck. In order to take advantage of Flash in the most limited budgets, enterprises must look at different architectures and not go by legacy storage providers. They should consider hybrid storage which allows enterprises to take benefit of both Flash as well as HDD’s and can outperform any standard flash enabled enterprise storage in a single appliance.

He says, “Definitely we see customers replacing hard disk and standard enterprise storage with flash technology provided they are able to deliver high performance in a small hardware infrastructure footprint. For example, FusionIO has proved recently that they can achieve 1.1 Billion IOPS using 8 standard tier one servers with one FusionIO drives in each server leading to a quantum leap in terms performance and acceleration, which has never seen before.”

Pure Storage claims that a number of customers that have completely eliminated their legacy hybrid hard disk drive-based arrays in exchange for All Flash Arrays.

“We continue to engage with the thought leaders in many of our Enterprise customers that are seeking advice in terms of planning to eliminate hard disk from their data centres because of the many benefits of All flash storage arrays. Thanks to data reduction techniques such as compression and deduplication implemented by Pure Storage, flash has already become the preferred choice of business critical applications, and that trend is increasing. Nearly 50% of all flash storage for Pure Storage is made up of database applications because of the ability to get data reduction 3-10X. “

So there it is. Flash enabled datacenters are likely to be one of the major shifts on the IT Infrastructural roadmap.

Features

Redefining Real Estate: The Rise of Wellness-Centric Spaces

Published

2 months ago

March 14, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

By Mark Phoenix – CEO of Sankari

The way we think about real estate is evolving, and at the heart of this change is a renewed focus on wellness. As we become more aware of the profound impact our living environments have on our health and well-being, it’s clear that real estate must go beyond aesthetics and luxury—it must support a lifestyle of vitality and longevity. To me, true luxury is no longer defined solely by opulence but by spaces that promote health, balance, and connection.

The demand for wellness-oriented spaces is growing rapidly, and real estate developers must rise to meet it. Today’s buyers are looking for more than just high-end finishes and exclusive locations—they want environments that enhance their well-being. Integrating wellness features such as fitness centers, yoga studios, meditation areas, and holistic health services is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. These spaces don’t just add value to a property; they create communities that create physical health, mental clarity, and social engagement.

Wellness-centric design is about more than just adding amenities—it’s about creating environments that encourage movement, relaxation, and human connection. By prioritizing well-being in real estate, developers can offer residents a lifestyle that aligns with modern values and aspirations. These spaces cultivate a sense of belonging, allowing people to come together in ways that enrich their lives beyond the walls of their homes.

Beyond individual benefits, wellness-focused communities have a lasting impact on society. As more people seek out homes that support their health, the real estate industry has an opportunity to lead this cultural shift. Developments that incorporate sustainable materials, biophilic design, and eco-friendly building practices not only benefit residents but also contribute to a healthier planet.

In the ultra-luxury segment, this focus on wellness is especially meaningful. The most sought-after properties are no longer just about extravagance—they are about creating a sanctuary where people can rejuvenate both physically and mentally. True luxury lies in thoughtful, health-driven design that enhances everyday life in meaningful ways.

Designing for wellness also means partnering with visionary architects and designers who understand the importance of both form and function. In regions with challenging climates, for example, innovative solutions can help reduce environmental impact while enhancing comfort and efficiency. Securing sustainability certifications like LEED further reinforces a commitment to responsible development and aligns with the global movement toward eco-conscious living.

For me, integrating wellness into real estate is more than just a trend—it’s a deeply personal mission and a strategic imperative. The places we live should do more than just shelter us; they should actively contribute to our health and happiness. By embedding wellness into the very foundation of luxury real estate, we’re not just shaping beautiful spaces—we’re shaping better lives.

Features

We are bringing tradition to every table in just five minutes

Published

2 months ago

February 20, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

Exclusive Interview with Ashvin Subramanyam, CEO International Business, Orkla India

In this exclusive interview, Ashvin Subramanyam, CEO of International Business at Orkla India, shares insights on the brand’s participation at Gulfood 2025 and its mission to blend tradition with innovation in the Middle East. With the launch of Eastern’s 5-Minute Breakfast range and a refreshed Arabic spice portfolio, Orkla IMEA is redefining convenience without compromising on authenticity.

What can we expect from Orkla IMEA’s presence at Gulfood 2025, and how significant is this event for your brand’s growth in the region?

At Gulfood 2025, Orkla IMEA, subsidiary of Orkla India, is set to make a strong impact by unveiling the Eastern 5-Minute Breakfast range, designed to bring the authentic flavors of Kerala to the fast-growing ready-to-cook market in the Middle East. In addition, visitors can expect a refreshed Arabic spice portfolio, reflecting Orkla India’s continued commitment to catering to the diverse culinary preferences of the region.

Gulfood is a key platform for us as it enables us to showcase our latest innovations to a global audience, including retailers, distributors, and food industry leaders. The Middle East is a strategic market for our expansion. By blending tradition with convenience, our goal through this event is to become a household name across diverse communities in the region, reinforcing our commitment to quality, authenticity, and innovation in packaged foods.

How does Gulfood help Orkla IMEA connect with new markets, consumers, and industry partners, particularly in the Middle East?

Gulfood serves as a vital gateway for Orkla India to connect with new markets, consumers, and industry partners through its subsidiary Orkla IMEA in the Middle East. As one of the world’s largest food and beverage trade exhibitions, it provides an unparalleled opportunity to engage directly with key stakeholders, including retailers, distributors, and hospitality businesses, facilitating strategic partnerships and market expansion.

For Orkla India, this event is instrumental in understanding regional consumer trends, preferences, and evolving dietary habits, particularly in the fast-growing packaged food sector. The launch of the Eastern 5-Minute Breakfast range and refreshed Arabic spice portfolio at Gulfood allows us to showcase our innovation in convenience-driven yet authentic culinary solutions.

By participating in Gulfood, we strengthen our brand presence, foster collaborations with regional partners, and position ourselves as a trusted name in ethnic and mainstream food categories. It’s a key milestone in our vision to become a household name in the Middle East.

Eastern is set to unveil its preservative-free quick South Indian 5-Minute Breakfast range. What was the inspiration behind this concept?

The Eastern 5-Minute Breakfast range was inspired by the growing need for convenient, time-saving meal solutions that do not compromise on authentic taste and quality. South Indian breakfasts, particularly Kerala’s traditional dishes, are deeply rooted in culture, requiring significant time and effort to prepare. However, with modern lifestyles becoming increasingly fast-paced, many consumers struggle to recreate these meals from scratch.

Recognizing this shift, Eastern set out to bridge the gap between tradition and convenience by crafting a range that retains the authentic flavours and textures of Kerala’s most-loved breakfasts while eliminating the long preparation time. The preservative-free formula ensures that consumers enjoy fresh, wholesome meals made from high-quality ingredients in just three easy steps, ready in five minutes.

With this innovation, Eastern empowers busy professionals, young families, and expatriates to stay connected to their culinary heritage without compromising on their schedules, making traditional breakfast accessible anytime, anywhere in just 5 minutes.

Can you give us an insight into the development process behind this 5-Minute Breakfast range, especially in maintaining authentic South Indian flavors without preservatives?

The development process for our 5-Minute Breakfast range began with a deep understanding of our consumers’ evolving lifestyles and their desire for authentic Kerala-style breakfasts that eliminate a lengthy preparation process. We identified a unique need-gap: while traditional dishes like Puttu, Appam, and Idiyappam are much-loved, the time and effort they require can be challenging in today’s fast-paced world.

Our journey involved benchmarking these dishes to the traditional methods used by homemakers, capturing the essence of how an amma would prepare them at home. This set the standard for the flavor profiles we aimed to achieve. The challenge was to replicate the authentic taste and texture while ensuring our products were preservative-free.

Our R&D team worked tirelessly, conducting extensive trials to balance authenticity and convenience. Through our innovation center we crafted recipes that retain the goodness of traditional Kerala breakfasts while being ready in just five minutes. With this range, Eastern redefines breakfast convenience, allowing families to savor the true flavors of Kerala in a fraction of time.

With over one million Keralites in the UAE, how does Eastern plan to cater to both the traditional tastes of this community and the broader multicultural audience?

With almost two million Keralites in the UAE, Eastern understands the deep emotional and cultural connection this community has with its traditional cuisine. The Eastern 5-Minute Breakfast range is designed to preserve the authentic flavours of Kerala while offering a convenient solution for modern lifestyles. By using high-quality ingredients and a preservative-free formula, the range ensures that the taste and texture remain true to tradition, making it an ideal choice for Malayalees longing for home-cooked meals.

While there are other instant and ready-to-eat options in the market, Eastern’s range stands out by offering dishes like Puttu and Palappam, which traditionally require culinary expertise and time-consuming preparation. These dishes are not widely available in the quick- convenience food category.

At the same time, Eastern is expanding its reach to a broader multicultural audience by showcasing South Indian cuisine as a flavourful, nutritious, and easy-to-prepare option for all. The simplicity of the 3 Easy Steps preparation makes these dishes accessible to non-South Indian consumers who are eager to explore new flavours. Through strategic retail partnerships, digital outreach and and aggressive in-store sampling, Eastern aims to introduce and establish South Indian breakfast as a preferred choice for consumers in this region.

What’s one thing about Orkla IMEA that people might not know but should?

While Orkla IMEA was incorporated recently, we have been in the region for over 25 years now, through our brand Eastern.

Features

2025 Hospitality Tech Trends

Published

3 months ago

February 12, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

By Prince Thampi, Founder and CEO, Hudini

As we approach 2025, the hospitality industry is poised for transformational growth, driven by evolving traveller preferences and advancements in technology. The future of hospitality promises enhanced convenience, personalisation and sustainability, with a significant focus on creating memorable experiences for guests. Let’s dive into five key trends that will shape the hospitality tech landscape in 2025 and beyond.

The Continued Rise of Frictionless Technology

The increased demand for frictionless experiences is set to dominate the industry, with more and more travellers preferring hotels that offer touch-free check-in, check-out, and room access via mobile apps. This trend reflects a broader shift towards easy interactions powered by seamless digital integration. Mobile apps have been an essential tool for a few years now, enabling guests to manage their stays, order room service, and access hotel information effortlessly. With the introduction of Gen AI, those apps have become more powerful than ever and are now able to provide highly personalised recommendations and speak in different languages.

Hotels embracing this trend will gain a competitive edge, as tech-savvy travellers prioritise convenience and efficiency during their stay. According to a recent survey by Deloitte, around 72% of travellers are more likely to choose a hotel that offers mobile check-in and check-out services over those that don’t.

Hyper Personalised Guest Experiences

In 2025, personalisation will continue to be at the core of hospitality services but will finally be taken to the next level thanks to Gen AI. Guests expect hotels to anticipate their needs and offer tailored experiences, from customised room settings to personalised dining recommendations. Apps powered by AI are now able to predict guest needs based on a wealth of data, ingested from the hotel systems or fed externally.

Leveraging guest data and insights, hotels can create unique offerings that cater to individual preferences. This level of personalisation not only enhances guest satisfaction but also fosters loyalty and repeat bookings. According to Oracle’s findings, biometrics and AI are set to play pivotal roles, with 62% of guests valuing automated recognition for personalised interactions. Biometrics will experience a breakthrough into mainstream hospitality in 2025. Facial recognition technology has matured significantly and is ready to be weaved into the guest experience. It will enable better security and guest recognition while protecting their privacy at the same time.

AI-Enabled Customer Service

Artificial intelligence is revolutionising every aspect of the hospitality industry, but will be by itself a new way of providing customer service. Chatbots and virtual assistants are becoming standard tools for handling common queries, offering instant support, and streamlining operations at any time and in any language.

AI-driven solutions not only enhance efficiency but also provide guests with 24/7 assistance, ensuring a smoother and more satisfying experience. By integrating AI technologies, hotels can free up staff to focus on delivering exceptional in-person service.

Sustainability and Eco-Friendly Practices

Sustainability is no longer optional, it’s a necessity often enforced by regulation. Travellers are increasingly favouring hotels that adopt eco-friendly practices, such as using locally sourced food, implementing energy-efficient operations, and reducing waste.

By prioritising sustainability, hotels not only meet guest expectations but also contribute positively to the environment. This commitment to green initiatives enhances brand reputation and attracts environmentally conscious travellers. A recent survey by Booking.com found that 83% of global respondents believe more sustainable travel is vital, with 49% believing there aren’t enough sustainable travel options and 53% saying they get annoyed when a hotel prevents them from being sustainable.

Smart use of technology is key in the sustainability journey of hotels. Technology can accurately measure the reduction in carbon footprint, it will help reduce energy and adopt renewable energy sources, and will enable the effective management of food waste. Many hospitality apps allow guests to apply green energy settings to a room, some will even exchange your energy savings to loyalty points.

The return of ‘real’

With Gen Z – the first generation grown up with everything digital – becoming the next large group to travel, the craving for ‘real’ experiences is bigger than it ever was. Hotels focusing on truly unique and hyper local experiences; a great meal, cultural outing, or wellness treatment will win the hearts of this generation.

Fortunately hotel apps, AI, automation of processes, sustainability tech and the removal of cumbersome processes like checking-in and studying paper manuals will free up hotel staff to allow them to do what they do best: providing unforgettable, personalised and sustainable experiences.