Intel Makes Case For Optane’s Future As NAND Biz Splits Off ‘NAND needs greater scale to go after the world‘s insatiable appetite for more data, and Optane needs platform-connected solutions to focus on faster insights on that data,’ Intel’s Rob Crooke says, explaining the rationale for selling the NAND business and keeping the Optane memory technology. By Dylan Martin December 21, 2020, 10:05 AM EST Intel believes Optane memory technology is a “disruptive, once-in-a-decade invention” that requires a system-level approach to enable performance gains and other benefits for data-intensive workloads. NAND SSD technology can’t deliver on the same level of performance and reliability but remains a large, important and economical part of the storage equation — albeit in the hands of a different owner.