Coughlin Associates provides market and technology analysis (including reports on several digital storage technologies and applications and a newsletter) as well as Data Storage Technical Consulting services.

FORBES: Tom Coughlin - Storage Bytes - Archive

Today the increased processing power of mobile devices as well as more ubiquitous network connectivity and the ability of data centers to provide (almost) always available storage capacity and applications, are causing a return to thin client computers accessing larger shared processing and storage resources.

FORBES: Changing Digital Storage Requirements for Clouds and Mobile Devices

In addition, the Drobo 5N, much like its sibling Thunderbolt-powered solutions the Drobo Mini and 5D, utilizes Drobo's Data-Aware Tiering capability, which intelligently uses high-performance flash (SSD) technology to accelerate performance of the storage array, allowing applications such as Adobe Lightroom and Apple iPhoto or iTunes fast access to data.

ENGADGET: Drobo's new 5N is a speedy $600 NAS for when you need files, stat

"Toggle DDR provides a faster interface than conventional NAND using an asynchronous design, delivering the benefits of high-speed data transfer to a wider market, such as for solid state drive (SSD) applications including enterprise storage, mobile phones, multimedia terminals and consumer products, " said Masaki Momodomi, Technical Executive, Memory product, Toshiba Corporation.

ENGADGET: Samsung and Toshiba double-down on 400Mbps DDR 2.0 NAND flash memory standard

Thus flash memory in ultra thin notebook computers will be most popular ether incorporated into a hybrid HDD (such as those offered by Seagate Technology, Western Digital and Toshiba) or as a dual storage device configuration where the OS and applications are stored on a small SSD and user data is stored on a HDD.

FORBES: Have Hard Disk Drives Peaked?