Ordinary databases and grid may be too slow, but ScaleOut Software stores data in memory on server farms or uses distributed caching on compute grids, to eliminate bottlenecks and reduce latency.
This need, plus caching of frequently accessed content will drive the requirements for flash memory storage as an important tier in enterprise storage infrastructures.
Write caching would store data to be written on the HDD in flash memory initially until enough data was in the flash cache to do an efficient write to the HDD disks.
Also, the LSI WarpDrive card's very low overhead consumption of server processor and DRAM memory resources enables even higher performance by leaving these resources available for useful application processing and data caching.
Perhaps the biggest gain may be in dual storage computers where a flash memory device is used for storing operating systems, software and frequently accessed content (and maybe even for write caching) while a hard disk drive provides much less expensive mass storage of user data.