Hitachi Storage Firm Bet Early On Cloud

The disk drive business has been through massive consolidation over the years. And much of the field has evolved toward solid-state drives, as well called flash storage, which is smaller than hard-disk drives. HDD features magnetic, rotating disks. Solid state, at the time, can break down less often, even though it's however more expensive. Flash is used in mobile devices and increasingly in notebook computers and even desktop computers.

Lot of talk about cloud computing

There has been a lot of talk about cloud computing. People have been predicting for a during, however it feels to me like it's certainly here to stay.

We made the decision to compete hard at cloud computing from a storage view. Fortunately we guessed right. Look at any research, just as smartphones or tablets. All these devices allow people to interact and consume and create an enormous amount of data. In other words all good for us. More and more that data is being stored in a cloud environment. Data is essential to what these companies do.

The world is just getting more complex in different ways. The innovation business has always been difficult. What's happened is that the formula for success, as our clients diversify, requires you have to have a lot more tools in your tool kit. You have to do a lot more different things.

Few things are happening

A few things are happening. On a general level, the innovation in solid-state devices continues to improve so that they can be used in different environments. They are now storing great amounts of data and we will take advantage of that. We have figured out different ways of how to make solid state more reliable. One thing about hard drives is you can store a lot of data very reliably. We're trying to bring our technology at the same time with the research that exists in solid state.

Milligan: I'm a glass-half-full guy. Storage is a hot business. Take Fusion-io. They are not directly in our business, however I am excited that more investment money is coming into storage and that people are focused on the market. It means we're in the right market. For us to be successful, we have to continue to innovate. We don't know who will survive.