Skyera has built a 44TB storage array, called the Skyhawk, using MLC (multilevel cell) flash media made with a dense manufacturing process of 19nm to 20nm. That type of flash is less expensive than the media used in most solid-state enterprise storage systems, but it's not built to be reliable for five years, the standard for enterprise equipment. Skyera says it can achieve that longevity through proprietary controller and RAID technology.

The result is a storage array that can fit into a standard iSCSI environment but costs less than US$3 per gigabyte, or less than $1 per gigabyte when Skyera's data compression and deduplication are applied, according to the company. It compares that price with a typical cost of about $1.80 per gigabyte for a typical enterprise hard-disk array. The multiple proprietary elements of the product don't affect how it works with other vendors' equipment, because the Skyhawk has an integrated Ethernet switch, said Tony Barbagallo, vice president of marketing.

If Skyera can fulfill those promises, it could help to drive growth that IDC estimates will make enterprise flash shipments in 2016 more than 20 times what they will be this year.

"Getting those price points down is very, very important for the market to continue to grow," IDC analyst Jeff Janukowicz said. Enterprises like the speed of flash but cost is still a barrier, he said. The declining cost of flash media itself, plus the use of compression and deduplication to effectively fit more data in a given capacity, have combined to whittle away prices, he said. One caveat to the efficiency gains promised by deduplication is that not all types of data or applications can take equal advantage of this technique, Janukowicz said.

Enterprises use storage more intensively than consumers do, rewriting the data on a chip much more frequently. That tends to cause errors and failures, so flash for business has to be more solidly built or use other techniques to keep the media reliable. In addition, CIOs investing in storage equipment for data centers expect it to last at least five years.