Top 5 Reasons to Retrofit Laptops with Flash Memory - WHITE PAPER
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WHITE PAPER
Top 5 Reasons to Retrofit Laptops
with Flash Memory
951 SanDisk Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035
©2014 SanDIsk Corporation. All rights reserved www.SanDisk.comTop 5 Reasons to Retrofit Laptops with Flash Memory
Table of Contents
Reason No. 1: Reduce total cost of ownership. 3
Reason No. 2: Improve user productivity and enhance application performance. 4
Reason No. 3: Reduce IT labor costs. 4
Reason No. 4: Modernize your environment. 5
Reason No. 5: Make the upgrade simply and cost efficiently. 5
Conclusion 6
2Top 5 Reasons to Retrofit Laptops with Flash Memory
Laptop computers equipped with flash memory can help organizations achieve significant cost savings
and productivity improvements compared with the challenges involved in continuing to support a fleet
of hard disk drive (HDD)-based devices.
So why aren’t IT organizations rushing headlong to make the shift?
Two big reasons:
1. It’s only been in the past few years that the price of solid-state drives (SSDs) has come down to
the point where the economics make sense for replacing HDD-based devices.
2. Making the transition and retrofitting a whole fleet of laptops requires commitments to
manpower and expertise that most IT organizations simply don’t have.
However, as with many things in the IT world, the realities have changed in a hurry.
On the one hand, the economics of retrofitting laptops with flash storage have become so compelling
that IT decision makers have to take a second look. Companies could be looking at savings of as much
as $610 per year for each laptop in their fleet.1
On the other hand, the commitment in resources and expertise to make the shift is no longer onerous:
In fact, market leader SanDisk now deploys a services-based model through which their team will
handle the entire process in an extremely cost-efficient manner.
So with the two major obstacles gone, why shouldn’t you retrofit your laptops with flash storage? We
couldn’t find any compelling reasons not to make the shift, but we have come up with the top five
reasons why you should. Here they are:
Reason No. 1: Reduce total cost of ownership.
You may be looking at this and wondering: How can we reduce TCO if SSDs are still more expensive
than HDDs? As you know, there’s a lot more that goes into TCO than up-front investment. IDC
conducted a complete operational analysis several years ago, comparing the costs of owning and
managing SSD-equipped corporate laptops versus HDD-equipped laptops. Driven by the significant
price erosion of SSD versus HDDs, IDC concluded that SSDs can reduce TCO over time, including savings
1
“SanDisk Case Study: SSD Deployment Replaces 4,600 HDDs in SanDisk Employee Laptops,” SanDisk, 2013
3Top 5 Reasons to Retrofit Laptops with Flash Memory
through extended lifecycles, IT labor and operational costs and business gains through enhanced user
productivity.2 More recently, SSD manufacturer and market leader SanDisk retrofitted its entire fleet
of 4,600 laptops around the world. Based on actual in-field experience, the company has been able
to document annual savings of as much as $610 per year for each laptop, enabling SanDisk to defer
approximately $1.84 million in costs each year.3
Reason No. 2: Improve user productivity and enhance application performance.
It’s a pretty simple concept: SSDs are much faster than HDDs, so workers using them can get more
work done in a shorter period of time. Here are just some of the many differences, based on average
benchmark scores:4
¡ The data encryption process is typically more than 60% faster on SSDs versus HDDs.
¡ Boot time improves by 46%, while shutdown is 58% faster.
¡ Operating system deployment is 30% faster, virus scan is 306% faster, and file write is
more than 400% faster.
¡ Re-image time is reduced by 30% using SSDs.
The benefits of faster drives are clear: IDC estimated that employee productivity increases by 35%,
with nearly instantaneous access to applications.5 In addition, because SSDs do not have mechanical
parts, they are far more reliable than HDDs and have a longer life span. The increase in reliability
means an increase in uptime, which is important as mobile workers rely more than ever on their
devices for connections to business-critical applications and information. It’s no surprise that almost
93% of respondents to a survey at SanDisk said they saw improvements in their user experience and
productivity as a result of the SSD retrofit.
Reason No. 3: Reduce IT labor costs.
The better reliability of SSDs also translates into savings for the IT department, both in costs and
productivity. At SanDisk, the frequency of hardware-related service tickets issued by the help desk
declined by nearly 60% since the beginning of the companywide SSD deployment. IDC estimated that
the IT labor costs involved in evaluating, fixing and repairing HDDs, plus the costs of recovering lost
data, would decrease by a whopping 86% per year with a shift to SSDs.6
2
“The Total Cost of Ownership for an SSD-Enabled PC,” IDC, July 2011
3
Ibid, footnote No. 1.
4
Ibid, footnote No. 1.
5
Ibid, footnote No. 2.
6
Ibid, footnote No. 2.
4Top 5 Reasons to Retrofit Laptops with Flash Memory
Reason No. 4: Modernize your environment.
SSDs are the future; HDDs are the past. In delivering modern solutions for today’s significant IT
challenges, it is becoming abundantly clear that the future is now. This is taking place in the data
center, where all-flash solutions are growing at a rate of more than 58% a year. It should also be taking
place at the endpoint, where the advantages of SSDs are significant, particularly in light of the growing
importance and reliance upon an increasingly mobile workforce.
Modern work environments, in fact, are empowering employees to perform duties outside their scope
of work. The enhanced performance capabilities of laptops with SSDs often enable workers to take on
more when needed. As an example, a sales analyst in a startup environment may be asked to create
marketing collateral or design high-intensive PowerPoint presentations that will benefit greatly from
the better speed and performance of SSDs.
Laptops equipped with SSDs are not just more powerful and reliable than those with HDDs, but they
are also more resilient and secure. With no mechanical parts, SSDs are much less susceptible to harm
caused by mobile employees who may be careless with their laptops and bang them against a wall
or drop them on a floor. From a security standpoint, certain SSDs from SanDisk are equipped with
hardware-based encryption to protect the company against data loss from devices that are stolen
or lost.
Finally, SanDisk 128 GB and 256* GB SSDs for laptops come in at a very attractive price point for IT
buyers and provide more than enough storage capacity for users. It you look at a laptop equipped with
Microsoft® Windows® 7 and Office, plus large amount of Excel files, movies, photos, songs and other
data, most users will likely not come close to utilizing the entire storage capacity of even a 128GB drive
over a five-year life span.
Reason No. 5: Make the upgrade simply and cost efficiently.
As noted earlier, one of the natural objections to retrofitting a fleet of laptops to SSD storage is the
strain it can place on the IT organization—not just in time and resources, but also in developing
the proper expertise to handle the program. SanDisk, which is a leading manufacturer of SSDs, has
recognized this challenge and in response has introduced an SSD upgrade program whereby it handles
the entire process, turnkey, from doing the initial endpoint inventory analysis to post-deployment
follow up.
7
“All Flash Storage Market Poised for Growth,” IDC, June 2013
*1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Actual user capacity less.
5Top 5 Reasons to Retrofit Laptops with Flash Storage
SanDisk technical experts with experience in doing this type of retrofitting will work at your site to
make the transition seamless, with minimal disruption to your users and IT staff. The process typically
takes less than one hour per laptop, using a best-practices approach that SanDisk created in doing its
own 4,600-laptop retrofit. The process is actually relatively simple: The SanDisk technician will validate
the operational condition of the machine; clone the HDD to the SDD via migration tools; install the
SanDisk SSD, and validate the upgrade and return the laptop to the user.
There are significant advantages to turning this process over to SanDisk. For one, you don’t have to
overwhelm your IT department. For another, you can take advantage of SanDisk’s proven and refined
deployment process, as well as the skills and expertise of the company’s technicians. You can also take
advantage of other services the company offers, such as endpoint inventory analysis, daily progress
reporting and a post-development success survey. Finally, SanDisk offers a cost-efficient approach
to the upgrade because it manufactures its own SSDs—in fact, SanDisk is the only SSD vendor in the
market that offers this type of upgrade service.
Conclusion
As noted, the future is now for SSDs. The benefits in TCO, productivity, security, reliability and
performance are just too great to ignore. While at first glance it may seem to be an onerous process to
retrofit a fleet of laptop computers, upon closer examination the onus is not great— if you work with
a company that can not only handle the entire project, but can also apply a proven and refined best-
practices approach. That company is SanDisk.
Learn how SanDisk can help your organization reduce costs, improve productivity and modernize your
endpoints and entire IT environment: www.sandisk.com/star
©2014 SanDisk Corporation. All rights reserved. SanDisk is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries.
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