Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/652464
9 STORAGE SOLUTIONS MARCH 2016 STORAGE SOLUTIONS BY TOM COUGHLIN COUGHLIN ASSOCIATES WWW.TOMCOUGHLIN.COM 1 2015 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report, Coughlin Associates, www.tomcoughlin.com/techpapers.htm distribution and archiving) is increasing as shown in Figure 2. These pie charts are for expected revenue. Overall Shipped storage capacity of all these technol- ogies is expected to increase as the capacity of the technologies increases and the prices per-bit decline. As can be seen, flash memory, HDDs and magnetic tape are still expected to play a dominant role for the next few years. Optical storage technology is devel- oping and there are some applications, such as Face- book photo storage where this technology is playing a useful role. POST IN THE CLOUDS The availability of ubiquitous networking, mostly using WiFi, in geographic areas where post is com- monly done, has led to an increased use of digital storage in data centers accessed through the Internet or possibly a private network. Large data set trans- port technologies such as those available from Aspera (a division of IBM) and other companies allow the movement of relatively large, often realtime, video data sets. With content available through the Internet to collaborators in different time zones continuous post activity is possible, accelerating the time to complete projects and thus realize a return on the production investment. Cloud storage has many other appli- cations in media and entertainment, but Figure 3 shows our estimates for the growth and future of local, network-connected and cloud-based post production storage. Although all three types of digital storage are ex- pected to grow, cloud storage is expected to have the highest growth rate with total post production cloud storage capacity exceeding local storage by 2020. SUMMARY Digital storage is evolving, enabling richer media workflows. As a consequence, post storage is mak- ing use of flash memory as well as HDDs and even magnetic tape. The availability of ubiquitous network connectivity and the value of collaborative workflows are driving the growth of rich media content stored in the cloud. Thomas M. Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates, is a widely respected storage analyst and consultant with more than 30 years in the data storage industry. Figure 2: Storage Media Revenue 1 10,000,000 9,000,000 8,000,000 7,000,000 6,000,000 5,000,000 4,000,000 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 0 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Figure 3: Post production storage capacity annual demand 1 10,000,000 9,000,000 8,000,000 7,000,000 6,000,000 5,000,000 4,000,000 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 0 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020