{"id":41267,"date":"2014-03-15T14:48:35","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T14:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=41267"},"modified":"2014-03-15T15:05:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T15:05:39","slug":"data-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/data-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Data When You Need It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Image<\/a>

Image Source – \u201cRain Man,\u201d United Artists<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat you have to understand is, four days ago he was only my brother in name. And this morning we had pancakes.\u201d <\/em>Charlie \u2013 Rain Man, United Artists, 1988<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may not have heard the news, but the storage industry is struggling to grow.<\/p>\n

Not quite sure how a couple of analysts came to that conclusion; but hey, if they say it, it must be true \u2026 right?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see, this year folks will buy:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0A few billion smartphones
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 30-50M tablets
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A few hundred million notebook\/desktop computers
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A million + servers<\/p>\n

Folks will use the devices to:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Shoot photos, videos (millions a day)
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tweet, text, email (billions a day)
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Develop\/share business plans, presentations, information
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Write, share, copy news, gossip, stuff, music, movies, whatever<\/p>\n

Then there are the people that gather what they sterilely like to call big data:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, other usual suspects
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 NSA, your government, my government<\/p>\n

Even while all of this is going on, the storage industry will continue to shrink with unit volumes down five percent, according to IHS.<\/p>\n

When I heard that, Charlie and I said in unison, \u201cDon’t, don’t tell me that, ’cause I – I’m not even listening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Global Storage Shipment Forecast<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Untitled-2\"<\/a>More, Less<\/strong> \u2013 New smartphones, tablets, ultralights and wearables are being introduced\/sold every day.\u00a0 To keep them light, rugged and power conservative, most are offered with flash memory \u2013minimum flash memory, but flash memory just the same.\u00a0 But when folks go to buy more storage, they want a lot of storage that\u2019s cheap; and at less than $100 for 1+TB of capacity, hard drives win hands down.\u00a0 But still, some forecasts aren\u2019t rosy.<\/em><\/p>\n

True, there are fewer HD drive producers (WD, Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi),\u00a0 but you\u2019d never guess it by looking at all the great HD solution producers (EMC, HP, Dell, Other World Computing, LaCie, NewerTech and others).<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re all doing a pretty brisk business because of the storage demands from cloud companies (storage outsourcers), companies, home storage (family cloud), individuals (personal cloud) and the infamous \u201cothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Out-the-door shipments were 755.0 million units, down from 794.0 million; but still, capacities have grown from 500GB to 1-4TB.<\/p>\n

The only growth area IHS projects is chip-based storage (SSD) which grew 82 percent and should be enough to meet the smartphone, tablet, ultralight notebook, power game\/video producer and \u201cgotta be fast\u201d social media site needs.<\/p>\n

Face it, it\u2019s real easy to pick on folks you only look to for big bit buckets. After all, they\u2019re supposed to be cheap because they just aren\u2019t as sexy as your new phablet or wearable \u2026 at any price!<\/p>\n

When you fill the 16-32GB of storage on the device, remember what Dr. Bruner said, \u201cAny break from this routine leaves him terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n

You could put the stuff in the cloud; but the way everyone \u2013 and I mean everyone but you and me (not too sure about you) \u2013 is rifling through cloud files, I\u2019m not real confident about that.<\/p>\n

Even though nearly everything you do today touches the cloud in one way or another, we still have a growing array of HD-based things around our house.<\/p>\n

Only now, we call them personal, family, home clouds (kids like that better than back-up drives, NAS, shared storage).<\/p>\n

They\u2019re needed because kids didn\u2019t grow up with just one device; they\u2019ve got \u2018em all.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-3\"<\/a>Got, Use \u2018Em All<\/strong> \u2013 Kids today never knew a world without a smartphone, ultralight notebook, tablet or game system that could instantly access news, information and entertainment. And the information could be stored on the device; not a lot, but some. When they wanted more space, they could store stuff in the cloud, but that\u2019s hacked\/whacked so much and the device has a USB port so viola! they use a HD for their \u201cother\u201d storage.<\/em><\/p>\n

And according to IDC, they use them all, all the time.<\/p>\n

Your folks probably complained you were on the phone all the time, but today\u2019s kids really use their devices:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 53 percent less than six hours a day
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 38 percent 6-12 hours
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 10 percent (daughters) +12 hours<\/p>\n

All the while, they\u2019re creating really important stuff, which is why they constantly back up their devices \u2013 70 percent to external personal\/family clouds, 30 percent to Swiss cheese public clouds.<\/p>\n

According to IDC, your kids and mine (and companies\/agencies) will produce in excess of 40 zettabytes over the next few years. Or to personalize it, that\u2019s 5,200GB of data for every man, woman, kid on Earth.<\/p>\n

Now 40 ZB is pretty hard to get your head around, but it\u2019s estimated to be 57 times the numbers of grains of sand on all the beaches.<\/p>\n

To reach that heady goal, data is expected to double every two years.
\nWhile most of that data is going to be produced by the 60B devices talking to each other, people are still going to be doing their part.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-4\"<\/a>Office, Home<\/strong> \u2013 Sure, you store some of your stuff in the office data library and you can also store it in inexpensive public clouds. But for the real important data\/content, you don\u2019t want people to access or steal; nothing beats a personal, family, home cloud. Usually, a whole lot safer from \u201cthem.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

While IDC and others are quick to point out that businesses and organizations are only exploring a tiny fraction of the data with today\u2019s constantly improving data analytics, kids and advanced kids are becoming less interested in helping those folks find and take advantage of that \u201cvaluable\u201d information.
\nYou know, information they want to get by studying social media use, discrete studies, medical\/financial activity, security footage and little things like that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true, those data analytic people would like to see IHS\u2019s bullish outlook for SSD to take over the world become real so they could gather, process all your information faster.<\/p>\n

Then they wouldn\u2019t have to repeat Charlie\u2019s statement, \u201cHe is answering a question from a half hour ago!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But industry experts like Jim Handy, of Objective Analysis, sees more wishful thinking than reality.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-5\"<\/a>Uphill Climb<\/strong> \u2013 While SSD\/flash storage unit sales may have increased dramatically, it\u2019s also important to remember that they started from an extremely low base and the per unit\/per GB cost is still much higher than HDs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, the need\/potential is clearly there but\u2026<\/p>\n

Handy points out it takes a year or two to build a flash manufacturing facility from the ground up at a cost of about $10B; and there\u2019s a lot of engineering, chemistry and magic in getting the processes right for optimum production performance.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the perpetual challenge industry challenge of:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 People who push for volume and hope they\u2019ll make a profit down the road
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Folks who focus on performance, quality, support, service and a reasonable profit<\/p>\n

Still, there are people running toward the light every year.<\/p>\n

Unless you follow the industry closely, it\u2019s tough to choose the right company, pick the best storage product.<\/p>\n

Handy and Tom Coughlin (Coughlin Associates) point out that:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Storage (especially flash) is bought for what\u2019s under the hood, but that\u2019s difficult to determine because there\u2019s no eye-popping new case or improved UI (user interface).
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Put five SSD drives (or HDs) down side-by-side and they look pretty much alike but they could be worlds apart.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 People really need to read professional and customer reviews, check the options they\u2019re considering and talk with friends.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Look beyond price because the content you store on the device is the most valuable stuff in the world.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind what Vern said, \u201cI’m not sure but I don’t think people are his first priority.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

With everyone creating and casting content into the cloud in hopes that someone will give it a safe home, it\u2019s even more important to ensure your stuff is safe from information scraping eyes.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-6\"<\/a>Beat On the Spread<\/strong> \u2013 People young and old steadily produce more and more content, data, information and yet, according to IDC, more than half of it has no place to rest when it\u2019s not in use. We know that most of it is simply transient data (data surrounding the data to help it move across the Internet or is temporary \u2013 streamed, viewed, discarded) but the gnawing issue facing most IT and storage managers is that they never know what information has value, what doesn\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are people who refer to the post-storage era; but frankly, I can\u2019t figure out what in the heck they\u2019re talking about. It can\u2019t simply exist \u2026 somewhere.<\/p>\n

I also know that maybe half of what I have stored is a duplicate \u2013 you know a copy or two just in case. And I\u2019m going to de-dup right after I clean out the garage.
\nUntil then, I\u2019ll use the best, highest-capacity SSD drives on our devices and then add more cheap, really big HDs to keep the back-ups and dups.<\/p>\n

What the heck \u2026 I may even throw some of it up into \u201cthe cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Untitled-7\"<\/a>But I\u2019ll keep Charlie\u2019s comment in mind, \u201cNow casinos have house rules: they don’t like to lose. So you never show that you’re counting cards. That is *the* cardinal sin, Ray.\u201d<\/em>
\n# # #<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhat you have to understand is, four days ago he was only my brother in name. And this morning we had pancakes.\u201d Charlie \u2013 Rain Man, United Artists, 1988 You may not have...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2055,"featured_media":41270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2533,7,1],"tags":[7442,3734,7440,7441,611,7439],"class_list":["post-41267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abt-news","category-technology","category-uncategorized","tag-available-storage","tag-cloud-storage","tag-hdd-producers","tag-information-creation","tag-ssd","tag-storage-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}