Entries tagged as ‘Japan’
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…
Categories: Industry trends · International · Random · Storage Systems
Tagged: storage, HD, Japan, internet, sushi, Panasonic
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.
Categories: Industry trends · International · Surveillance
Tagged: Japan, storage, Surveillance, system builders
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.
Categories: Industry trends · International
Tagged: broadband, Computerworld, Fedex, France, Japan, Korea, Robert Mitchell, UPS, US
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:
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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.
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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.
Categories: Digital Home · Industry trends · International
Tagged: Fujitsu, Hitachi, Japan, Samsung, Seagate, storage, technology, Tokyo, Toshiba, trends, WD
