With today’s first wave of news out of HP Discover 2013, Hewlett-Packard is showing its 3PAR + flash play. Today HP rolled out an all-flash version of its HP 3PAR StoreServ system as well as software updates to boost response time.  Already HP is addressing some of the questions I mentioned yesterday ahead of this week’s Discover event, noting two areas of interest: how HP defines 3PAR’s role in updates to its flash-based storage technology, and what Vertica’s momentum means for HP’s Big Data play. Coming to shore with that first wave is flash storage and solid state systems.

HP’s move is far from unexpected, as multiple storage players are pushing flash storage and solid state systems to manage analytics. For example, IBM made big news back in April when it invested $1 billion into flash research and development. The party quickly gets even more crowded. Other array makers have bought startups with dedicated all-flash storage (EMC’s $430 million purchase of XtremeIO, IBM jumping in with Texas Memory Systems) or put flash drives into existing architectures (NetApp’s EF540, Dell’s Flash Optimized System).

Advancing its own architecture

HP’s advantage comes from its 3PAR architecture already possessing some flash-friendly features. Some of those flash-friendly features are fine levels of granularity from the 3PAR ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) that are suited to flash block sizes and striping of data across drives by the 3PAR OS. This significantly helps against flash cell wear.

HP also announced the StoreOnce VSA (virtual storage appliance). It can be installed on a virtual server platform and provisioned with disk to create a backup appliance. It’s HP’s software version of its existing hardware backup appliance. HP also launched a midrange tape library, the HP StoreEver MSL6480.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) supports this growing trend with their Worldwide Storage Software Qview report, released Monday. Storage software revenues increased 3.2 percent during the Q1 of 2013 compared to the same quarter of 2012. Revenue totaled $2.6 billion.

“Overall sales of storage software improved during the first quarter of 2013,” said Eric Sheppard, Research Director, Storage Software at IDC. “Demand was strongest for Data Protection & Recovery software as well as Storage & Device Management software. This was driven by a broad need for data resiliency, improvements to operational efficiencies, and better insights into installed data center infrastructure.”

EMC, IBM, and Symantec were the top three vendors in the overall storage software market with market shares (based on revenues) of 23.9 percent, 16.8 percent, and 14.7 percent, respectively. Veeam and CommVault experienced the largest year-over-year growth during the quarter with increases of 35.4 percent and 23.0 percent, respectively. Data Protection & Recovery software revenues were up 7.6 percent year over year to $1.3 billion. Storage & Device Management software revenues grew 7.3 percent year over year to $706.6 million.

While Flash carries three markets (flash storage on servers, flash-only storage arrays, and traditional storage arrays), HP believes that its existing architecture can easily adapt to flash and its stack will be better for the enterprise. So far all of the news out of HP Discover 2013 supports that belief. We haven’t heard much about Vertica or HP’s Big Data plays (if any) yet. Stay tuned.