Description

In this episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to IT, host Michelle Dawn Mooney speaks with Sebastien Jean, Chief Technology Officer at Phison Electronics, to explore the next frontier of enterprise storage—especially as AI and hybrid IT environments demand faster, denser, and more intelligent infrastructure. With over a decade of experience designing Nand flash and embedded systems, Sebastien explains how storage is evolving far beyond “faster hard drives” to become a key enabler of scalable, high-performance architectures.

The conversation covers

• Why SSDs are reshaping assumptions around performance, endurance, and total cost of ownership
• How NVMe and PCIe Gen5/6 SSDs are unlocking direct GPU access and reducing architectural bottlenecks
• Why high-density flash is critical for feeding AI workloads and scaling efficiently
• The role of pre-filtering and embedded compute in SSDs to reduce network overhead
• How hybrid and on-prem environments differ in latency, security, and user experience
• Emerging trends in petabyte-scale drives, in-drive DRAM, and application-aligned storage design

With insights from enterprise deployments and hyperscalers, Sebastien shares how IT leaders can future-proof their infrastructure by rethinking how, where, and why they store data—without sacrificing performance or control.

Listen in to learn how to modernize your storage strategy for AI, improve data center efficiency, and align SSD selection to long-term performance and environmental goals.