We see suitable use cases for all three media formats moving forward. Unless the cost of flash can get very close to that of HDDs, it is unlikely that flash can ultimately replace disk in many environments where data is used on a day-to-day basis.
We expect tape will continue to replace disk in long-term storage environments due to tape’s lower cost, higher reliability, and air gap benefits that differentiate it from HDDs. And in turn, we anticipate flash will continue to replace disk in places where IOPs and very high throughput make it the preferred storage medium of choice. This will leave disk as a smaller segment of storage where the focus is on higher capacity 3.5” disk drives.