Intel Flash Miniature Card. Photo: wiki commons.

While Israel is the 97th most populated country in the world, with just under 8 million people, it has become a giant in the industry of storage – flash storage.

The technology of flash storage enables companies to offer cloud computing and online transactional services, and Israeli intellectual property in this area is among the world’s best.  The first flash drive was developed in Israel by M-Systems, in a partnership with IBM.

“Israel has long been a nation that draws in big corporate R&D facilities and acquisitions,” Lucas Merian of Computerworld writes. “Microsoft and Cisco both built their first non-U.S. R&D facilities there, for instance. Google has two R&D centers in Israel now; Intel has four. ”

In January, Apple purchased Anobit, an Israel maker of flash storage products, and EMC recently purchased XtremeIO, another Israeli flash storage company.

Orna Berry, the former chief scientist for Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor told Merian that the Jewish state’s size has a lot to do with the vast amount of technology that is developed there.

“Because of Israel’s diminutive size and its location, technological innovation is more a matter of “life and death,” he said. “Many of the technologies, if we don’t invent them, we also [could not] buy them. It’s a political issue. Consequently, we often need to be self-sufficient in certain technologies. On the other hand, being first to market often gives us an opportunity to have a place in the market.”

The World Economic Forum named Israel the top country in the world for the quality of its scientific research institutions in it’s 2010-2011 report.