Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/83694
■ ■ ■ ■ Storage for example—may outweigh the cost. You can get some amazing data rates in a very small footprint (portability). Danielson: SSDs are now a trend with both positive and negative attributes. SSDs were the panacea for a while. Now their value and where the data storage devices sit on the cost/benefi t curve are better understood, and SSDs are not going to replace all the hard- drive technologies in play. However, some use SSDs as staged and tiered storage to re- duce latency on most-used content, and this trend will continue and grow. Customers use SSDs for latency-critical usage cases, like fi lm animation and eff ects rendering, to reduce the unused clock cycles in any given 24-hour period. SSDs for cached content are very ef- fective in these instances and, therefore, are worth the cost. What do you think of new developments, such as the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) in Linear Tape-Open (LTO)? Coughlin: File-based tape is assuming an Postproduction Storage Capacity Annual Demand 1,600,000 1,400,000 1,200,000 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 0 2010 NLE Cloud Capacity (TB) NLE Local Capacity (TB) NLE Local Network Capacity (TB) 2011 2012 important role in the professional M&E en- vironment. Already cloud-based archive ser- vices, such as the Permivault solution from Fujifi lm, point the way to creating low-cost and accessible media archives using LTO tapes with LTFS fi le systems. Danielson: LTFS supports the tape argu- ment by providing a fi le system that applica- tion vendors can leverage for MAM (Media Access Management) functionality. So LTFS is great in that regard since the ecosystem can develop effi ciency at the software application layer. But LTFS does not change the user's per- spective of tape in and of itself. Th e user still has the latency of accessing fi les, which means that tape remains a tier-two or tier-three stor- age alternative. Looking at the latest developments for object-based workfl ows, what advantages do they present? Coughlin: Object-based workfl ows are the logical extension of fi le-based workfl ows as fi le metadata moves to even more granular levels—each frame can be a separate fi le. Th is allows more accurate indexing of the metadata and, as a consequence, can speed up digital workfl ows and make them more convenient. Danielson: One advantage is that object stores support billions of objects and hundreds of sites. Global media and entertainment companies will build out true distributed content repositories, which the industry has been discussing since the mid-1990s. Another advantage is the Cloud Data Management In- 46 August/September 2012 terface (CDMI), which enables object-based workfl ows to span tiers and brands of stor- age as well as the cloud. Th ere are over 100 smart vendors, end users, and academic ex- perts working to make this standard a reality. Distributed content repositories will be able to span on-premise infrastructures, privately hosted cloud infrastructures, and public in- frastructures with security. Assets can be des- ignated for geographic dispersion, quality of service, security, legal rights, retention, and, of course, next steps in the workfl ow. Th e bene- fi ts of object stores will tip the cost and benefi t scale so that more companies will move to a consolidated enterprise-wide repository for all their media assets. Is a 40TB hard drive possible? Coughlin: Within 10 years time, we will likely see common HDD capacities of 60tb or greater, SSDs with multiple terabyte capaci- ties, and magnetic tapes with tens of terabytes of storage capacity. Danielson: We are talking to a company, NanoScale, that is working on a prototype 10tb platter that will be in a product a few years from now. Th eir non-magnetic technol- ogy has big upside potential, but it will take a while to get into production. So, yes, we will see 40tb drives eventually, and with higher data transfer rates than we have today. How much storage does our industry ex- pect to use over the next several years? Coughlin: In the 2012 Coughlin Associ- ates report, we stated that between 2012 and 2017, we expect about a 5.6x increase in the 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Source: The 2012 Coughlin Associates Report. required digital storage capacity used in the entertainment industry, and about a four-fold increase in storage capacity shipped per year (from 22,425pb to 87,152pb). Total media and entertainment storage revenue will grow more than 1.4x between 2012 and 2017 (from $5.6 billion to $7.8 billion). Danielson: It's clear that storage demands in the media and entertainment industry are rapidly rising. According to a 2012 survey by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers members, within fi ve years the digi- tal storage needs of the media and entertain- ment industry will increase 5.6 times. Howev- er, all sectors of the industry—fi lm, broadcast, cable/satellite/telco TV, Internet TV, and social media—are growing at varying rates. Each is driving unique demands for storage in bandwidth, latency, topology, reliability, appli- cation interoperability, and capacity. Film and broadcast TV have been growing at a steady rate, while cable TV is growing much more rapidly. Social media is expanding at an im- measurable rate. It is evident that the amount of storage we are going to use in the next three years will be more storage than we've used in the past 30 years. It's estimated that between 2011 and 2016, the media and entertainment industry will see about a 7.7 times increase in digital storage. ■ Douglas King is a freelance writer and producer based in Dallas. He has worked in the entertainment industry for more than 20 years, including time spent as a creative direc- tor for a game developer, product development manager, and writer/director for fi lm and television, currently writing/ producing for the Web comedy series "For Export Only." Total Capacity (TB)