"If it was just a single company, the likelihood is that the performance would matter less," Reichman said.

Solid-state storage has long been a part of data centers that need low latency. Since the 1990s, financial firms and other companies have stored large amounts of transaction data in DRAM for quick access, said storage consultant Tom Coughlin. Flash isn't quite as fast as DRAM, but it's less expensive, uses less power and holds onto its contents whether it's powered or not. As a result, IT managers are starting to see it as a more affordable path to fast reads of certain types of information, such as metadata, transaction data and bits needed for transactions. Even online entertainment companies are starting to get interested in flash storage for their content, Coughlin said. Flash is available in both SSDs, which come in the same form factor as hard drives, and smaller flash cards from vendors such as Fusion-io, which can be plugged directly into servers using PCI Express interfaces.

Most enterprise flash is made with a single-level architecture, which is more expensive and not quite as dense as the multilevel flash used in consumer devices such as iPods. Multilevel flash uses different levels of voltage for different bits of data, which allows more densely packed data but requires extra management that reduces real-world performance, Coughlin said. Many observers consider single-level more reliable and less prone to losing capacity over long periods of heavy use.

Major storage vendors such as EMC have been offering flash options since last year. Most get the actual drives from STEC, a solid-state storage manufacturer in Santa Ana, California, and integrate them into their own systems.

In April, EMC introduced Symmetrix V-Max, its first storage platform designed from the start to use SSDs as well as spinning disks. Symmetrix is particularly geared toward high performance, but SSDs are also available on the company's other storage systems.