Storage Effect

Korea is out front in adopting the digital lifestyle

My colleague in Korea pulled out his cell phone and extended an antenna.  “Terrestrial and satellite TV transmission. See?” 

They don’t make a big deal about it, but the Koreans I met here in Seoul are proud of the fact that they are a world leader in adopting digital technology.  Other proof points: ubiquitous 3G cellphones, wireless HD video streaming and downloads, and a lot of DivX-based video recording.  

It shows in their storage use as well.  Lots of 500GB and larger drives are used to stash movies, pictures, camera footage.  But especially video. 

Koreans upload more video than anyone other than the Chinese, Brazilians and Spaniards.  Their tools of choice are peer-to-peer sites.  It reminds me of Napster before the litigation, with video instead of music.

One downside to the Korean digital lifestyle: people are glued to their cellphones even more than in the States. 

You may feel life like your life has changed dramatically due to technology.  Hold on to your hat - Korea is proof that there’s more to come.

Saw this shop in the new Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo:

I’ve pretty much ceded all of my personal “search” business to Google. And I’m happy with that decision.  I trust the Google brand as my number one virtual guide to…well, anything I need to find. But seeing their logo on a real world storefront kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. 

Google soda?!

The iGoogle Art Cafe is a limited engagement gig.  But moves like this by the Googleplex beyond the information market seem ill-considered to me.  Even Google needs to know its limits.  

Comments?  How do you feel about the Google brand?

Internet storage conveys raw and tasty digital content to the masses

I had an absolutely fabulous lunch for less than $10 in Tokyo.  I love sushi, and the cheapest raw fish in Japan tastes far better than anything I can get at home in Minnesota.  If you haven’t been to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, I highly recommend it - as much for the sights and sounds as the food. 

Because of that funky conveyor belt, this place is able to feed huge volumes of people great food at a great price. 

The internet does the same for the world’s collective creative talent.  We can take whatever we want off of the digital conveyor belt - a direct connection to the best the world can turn into ones and zeroes.  And today’s high capacity storage systems make it all possible.   

The sky’s the limit for content storage

What’s happening with content in the clouds makes 1 TB drives seem downright inadequate.  It may seem like there’s a lot online now, but volume will grow even faster in the future. Do you know it takes 720 gigabytes to store one movie for Panasonic’s futuristic 150″ TV? 

The storage industry will have its hands full making room for our insatiable digital appetite.

Now if I could just find some sushi online…

Building out the digital infrastructure, Japan-style 

I’m back in Japan meeting with system builders and resellers.  It’s always inspiring to visit the spiritual center of consumer electronics, the birthplace of legendary consumer brands like Sony, Panasonic, and Nikon. 

What has struck me this visit is what’s going on “behind” the consumer.  Like everywhere else, the storage and solutions business here is expanding beyond the devices used to consume digital content to the infrastrucure that creates, delivers, archives and protects it.

Video surveillance will be big even in safe Japan

The details vary by country of course.  Japan is a world leader in smartphone adoption, for example, but is lagging in video surveillance adoption.  There are few if any casinos (a classic early adopter of this technology) and the country is legendarily safe.  But as the benefits of digitized surveillance move beyond the obvious with video analytics and other tools that make it a business tool, Japan will catch up, creating a mini-boom for storage solution providers here.

In the end, digital content and enabling technologies are a universal trend - and will come to roost in time most everywhere.

Bring digital solutions home to your customers

Looking for opportunity?  Cast a wide net.  Figure out where your customers can leverage an existing solution from someone like them around the corner or around the world. 

The US broadband industry needs to catch up with the rest of the world 

Most US businesses today can get 6Mbit/sec broadband - if they’re not excluded due to their rural location.  Sound speedy to you?  You don’t know what you’re missing.

 According to Robert Mitchell at Computerworld:

Will you get the bandwidth you need? If your business is in Europe or Asia, the answer is yes. The average advertised bandwidth in Japan is just under 1Gbit/sec. In Korea and France, it’s over 40Mbit/sec. That sort of capacity will drive innovations that U.S. businesses can’t even envision yet.

It’s not technology limited.  It’s how the industry is set up and regulated.

Bandwidth is as important to today’s information-enabled businesses as air shipping is to Fedex and UPS.  The US regulatory powers that be need to make changes - and fast - or risk serious competitive disadvantage for US-based business.

Look out world - here come digital downloads!

This post on Egypt’s problems with network outages seemed mundane when I first read it.    But then I read between the lines: Movie downloads are seriously impacting a developing country’s day-to-day economy!

When I think of Egypt’s economy, digital entertainment doesn’t come to mind.  Yet digital content has risen to a top economic priority due to unexpected but very understandable infrastructure problems.   Why is this such a big deal?  Because it’s evidence that third-world economies and their resulting digital needs will not lag the developed countires nearly as much as one might think.

The developing world is on a unique digital infrastructure path, bringing many poorer, high-population countries much more rapidly into the Digital World than their more economically developed brethren in the Americas, Asia and Europe.

This reminds me of conversations I had last week with our India team on the huge size of the Indian movie industry.  It goes way beyond Bollywood.  Indian production companies are today producing a disproportionate share of the world’s video content, and cinemas throughout India are converting to digital distribution at a rapid pace. 

The lesson here is that the Digital Age is a global phenomenon that will be driven more and more by population size than by per capita income. 

Tech is huge in Japan, but is mostly fulfilled by multinationals

There are 2 things I’ve learned from my colleagues here about the Japanese consumer and small business market for technology:

1. The Japanese are brand-focused as much or more than any country, which means custom-made solutions have a lower share of the market than other countries.
2. The early adopters are as geeky as they come!  Meaning that the Japanese enthusiasts really know their stuff, and demand incredibly rich detail and knowledge from their suppliers.

For this small but passionate and high-spending segment, Akihabara is still the center of the universe.  In this district in Tokyo, end users and businesses can buy any component, gadget or system known to man.  A few mega-stores are the main source for most of the volume here, but there are still many mom-and-pop techno shops.

For storage, this is the home turf for 3 of the world’s 6 disk drive makers.  So Hitachi, Fujitsu and Toshiba are the usual suspects for storage devices. Still, globalization has reached even the traditionally insular Japanese tech market.  Seagate, WD and Samsung drives are readily available as well.

Many innovations here are designed just for the Japanese market.  So if you want some fresh new-to-the-world ideas and want to see some really cool technology, find a way to get to Akihabara.

Custom-built PCs are big in China

In China there are over 200 million internet users and the number is growing fast.  Those that can afford their own PC usually go to a PC mall to get it, or to build their own. 

There are 15 PC malls in Shanghai. I visited 2 sprawling malls last week and talked to Cheng Yue Fang, owner of seven “DIY” (Do It Yourself) PC shops in the Shanghai area.  Her customers usually take 10-20 minutes to select component options from a printed “menu” for their build-while-you-wait computers.  It takes about 30 minutes to build the PC. 

She says two thirds of customers pretty much know what they want.  They often come in requesting the lowest price disk drive.  She recommends Seagate drives for their 5-year warranty. About half choose price, half choose the warranty. 

Even in this price-sensitive market, reliability matters when it comes where people keep their content!

If you’re up to literally doing it yourself, there are scores of component shops shoulder to shoulder in these malls, ready to give you a deal.  As you can imagine, the competition is fierce!

I haven’t been able to post from China - looks like WordPress is blocked there.  I don’t know if it’s because of the Katrina-esque storms and travel issues, or business as usual.

Anyway, I’m in Japan now. I’ll post on technology in Shanghai shortly. 

The weather had my colleagues in Shanghai reeling, and many were sad because their New Year’s celebrations wouldn’t be including their family members stuck throughout China.

Life went on anyway - in Shanghai at least - despite traffic hassles and buildings not designed to stay warm in the coldest weather in 50 years.

In Singapore, IT malls take competition to another level

Singapore is a lush, clean and beautiful city, with more shopping malls per capita than I’ve seen anywhere.  It’s no surprise that when it comes to computers, consumer electronics and even business systems, Singaporeans head to the mall.

Like most places, there are electronics superstores here.  But IT malls are the most acitve market for technology for consumers and small businesses. 

Funan DigitalLife Mall is a high-end version; in the past I’ve visited its down-and-dirty sibling, SimLim Square.   Imagine a Best Buy store with 20 competitors, all offering basically the same products, all inside a single enclosed mall. 

It’s no wonder that prices are so competitive here.  Imagine how difficult it is for these businesses to differentiate themselves.  Last trip I was able to buy a mobile storage chassis, ready to plug in a 2.5″ disk drive for a working solution, for about US$3.50.

At Funan, brand name computers and consumer electronics dominate.  Consumers and businesses go to SimLim more to buy components or to have a shop custom build a system for them while they wait.