Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/477832
1 STORAGE SOLUTIONS MARCH 2015 ost production professionals looking for storage solutions are spoiled for choice, with an array of options that are designed for high performance, flexibili- ty, ease of use and expandability. Here, Post speaks with a number of manufacturers and storage solution ex- perts, who are stepping up with new technologies that meet these ever-growing needs, as well as with some of their customers, who report back from the field or studios, with how they are benefitting from the varied choices available today. DR. TOM COUGHLIN Dr. Tom Coughlin is immersed in data on storage. As the president of Coughlin Associates in San Jose, CA (www.tomcoughlin.com), he orga- nizes the Storage Visions Confer- ence and Creative Storage Confer- ence, serves as general chairman of the Flash Memory Summit, and writes the annual Digital Storage for Media & Entertainment Report. "With higher frame rates, higher resolutions, great- er color depth and more cameras shooting content for longer periods, people shoot a lot more content, so there's a lot more raw data to work with," says Dr. Coughlin. "That has increased the pressure to increase storage capacity and created an increased demand for performance and bandwidth." Coupled with these greater needs is a "concern about product pricing," he adds. "People want more for less." And that may actually be possible to achieve. "If you're developing totally IP-based digital work- flows, that has big implications on cost factors and hardware complexity," he says. "You can make greater use of commodity network hardware instead of tradi- tional high-performance solutions. A recent HPA retreat featured a demo of an end-to-end IP-based workflow that would do a lot to reduce storage costs and pro- STORAGE SOLUTIONS A LOOK UNDER THE HOOD BY CHRISTINE BUNISH P JMR's products are made right here in the USA. Coughlin