In no particular order, events and trends driving storage in 2007:
Microsoft Windows Vista. The launch has been touch and go, but eventual broad-based adoption means much more storage per PC.
“Lost data” events - TJ Maxx, the UK Government, etc. Lost and stolen customer records in the news have created a whole new category of nightmares for business owners, driving them to invest in data security. Or secure data.
Data deduplication. Amazing data efficiency is becoming readily available. Rather than reduce the amount of data saved, it’s expanding the use of archiving.
External storage drives. Prices dropped this year, spiking sales of 250GB, 500GB, even 1 TB backup drives for homes and small businesses.
Video surveillance. Analog-to-digital conversion plus image processing innovations have resulted in huge growth in terabyte-scale surveillance for businesses of all sizes.
Video downloads. iTunes, Unbox, even network TV have introduced downloading movies and episodes (and seasons) into the mainstream.
Merlin Mann is rethinking email and its place in our lives with Inbox Zero. Lots of content and video, all of it valuable. Given how much of every day I spend on email, I’m going to bone up on these best practices this year-end to tame the e-beast in 2008.
Paradoxically, more efficient email leads to more demand for storage. The better the tools and methods available to manage email, the larger and more numerous the messages individuals can and will handle.
Storage growth in most uses is gated by content manageability.
The military is living the Digital Life, driving investment and innovation
It should be no surprise that the Digital Revolution is affecting the US Military much like it is our life and work.
Our common need: lots of content, delivered everywhere.
James Rogers at Byte and Switch found that storage infrastructure is one of the spending priorities from the recently passed Defense Authorization Bill.
For the military, the investment are probably not driven by YouTube and iTunes and Skype. But the need for better access to data in dicey locations does drive technology innovation:
Just goes to show that we’re all living a digital revolution that’s affecting every aspect of society. Let’s hope that as has happened many times in the past, investments in defense reap innovations that help us all in our daily lives.
How can you apply this innovation in your patch of the world?
The future of the internet infrastructue is not pizza boxes or Big Iron
Om Malik poses a question: Will the inefficiency of “pizza box” servers push the internet infrastructure back to Big Iron?
No way.
What we’re seeing is the creation of a new market, with unique requirements. What’s needed is Cheap Scale - thousands of servers, scalable at the drop of a hat. And tons of storage.
I had a great conversation with Stephen DiFranco at AMD on this exciting space just yesterday. He sees a classic new market dynamic, where custom solutions have been developed in-house by web hosting firms. Their technology is their ’special sauce’, but as the industry matures and grows, the solutions mature and standardize as well.
Vendor solutions are already going beyond the pizza box. Verari Systems and Rackable Systems have been leaders here, but the solutions are just beginning to evolve.
A peek into APEX IT’s data room with Jean Charles Campagnon. How APEX selects their storage, Dell support, what’s in a name? In servers, today’s Ferrari is tomorrow’s Yugo!
APEX IT is a consulting a US nationwide firm focused on Oracle implementation.
More from Jean Charles Compagnon, IT manager for APEX IT. Making deals on airplanes, Oracle demos via laptop, outfitting billable employees vs. non-billable staff, selective security.
IT is focused on enabling the core of their value: their consultants
Jean Charles Compagnon explains the role of storage in APEX IT’s business model. APEX IT is an Oracle-focused consulting firm. My apologies for the scratchy video - I’m getting a new camera for future interviews. Any recommendations?
My brother works at APEX IT. I’ve watched them steadily grow their business through years of wrenching industry change (can anyone say Larry Ellison?). Their ‘keep it simple’ approach to IT and storage seems to be working.
I’d like to interview more IT people, as well as solution providers. Let me know if you’ve got a story to tell. I’m based in Minneapolis, but do travel regularly, so let me know regardless of your location.
The easier it is to share content, the more valuable it becomes to the sharer.
The natural laws of content ownership are evolving in the Web 2.0 world. Robert Scoble sees this in his business. It’s playing out in the entertainment world with Digital Rights Management. The new paradox of content is that the easier it is to share, the more valuable it becomes to the sharer. And the more of it there is.
What it means to solution providers is that more efficient data management driven by data de-duplication, CDP, virtualization and other technologies will propagate data growth, not impede it. You’ll grow your storage business by helping your clients manage their information.
