All-flash arrays such as Violin's, like other flash storage, are helping to bring storage up to speed with ever-advancing servers, IDC analyst Jeff Janukowicz said.

"The amount of information that can be dealt with by a processor has grown exponentially over the last decade or so," Janukowicz said. "However, the storage performance really hasn't kept up with the demands on the compute side."

With a significant price premium over disk-based systems, all-flash arrays started out as tools for speed-intensive niche applications such as financial trading, he said. However, partly driven by higher-volume flash manufacturing for consumer devices, the price of solid-state storage is declining.

"As some of the costs have come down, it's finding more broad use cases," Janukowicz said.

IT departments that are looking at flash arrays as an alternative to disk-based systems will tend to demand the kinds of data management features and high availability they are used to, he said. The features Violin is adding should help it meet that bar.