Enterprise struggling to keep up with consumer storage growth; is the tail wagging the dog?

Computer Technology Review,  Jan, 2004  by Mark Ferelli

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

It is, or should be, well known in the data center that applications are king, and storage solutions are meant to support these applications and the business goals the applications represent.

The primacy of applications appears not only in the data center, but in the entertainment sphere and the consumer products space as well. These latter applications were foci of the 2004 Storage Visions Conference and Home Gateway Summit held in early January, just prior to the CES show in Las Vegas. Organized by industry analysts Tom Coughlin and Dennis Waid, Storage Visions addresses data storage for content creation, content distribution and content reception.

Archives Matter

After a lively keynote by Gary Gentry from Seagate Technology, technology panels began to discuss key issues in non-data center applications. Speakers from AVID to StorageTek examined post-production uses of pooled storage, as well as the vital importance of archiving for the entertainment industry. The presenters reinforced the need for archiving, noting that programming or other created content is an asset, and assets generate revenue. Additionally, archived content can be re-purposed to address new business opportunities. Finally, legacy content could be preserved and reused profitably. Key to the function of these new opportunities are storage devices, principally disk array subsystems and tape that reliably store and readily restore that archived content.

One of the applications discussed was personalized time shifting, as exemplified by the cable industry's video-on-demand efforts. Key enabling technologies for this application includes a new class of IP networks with caching nested throughout the network. The first step to an all-IP solution for cable is gigabit Ethernet to the hub, according to analyst Gary Schultz at Multimedia Research Group.

Conference organizer Tom Coughlin presented a discussion on hard disk drives and their growth in outside-the-data-center applications. He demonstrated that mobile and consumer electronics requirements for hard disk are growing significantly faster than enterprise hard disk; even more than the expected use of ATA in enterprise applications. The figure below illustrates the number of terabytes anticipated for shipment in the foreseeable future.

Coughlin also looked at the use of disk drives in mobile applications. He suggested that disk drives--rotating storage--appeared more and more in consumer applications. These are the smaller form factors: 1.8-inch, 1-inch, and possibly 0.8- and 0.7-inch drives. And they are appearing in MP3 players, PVP, digital cameras and mobile telephones. He concluded that rich media markets and consumer electronics are helping drive unit growth, but revenues will not increase at the same rate due to price-sensitive application issues. He also noted that tape cartridge capacity is growing, and point of parity in $/GB for HDDs vs. tape is some time in the future.

Solid-state storage and its use were covered by Jim Handy of Semico. Acknowledging that choosing between solid state and HDD for mobile applications is difficult, he developed a worth-while rule of thumb. He noted that flash is a good choice in portable applications with small file sizes. It is also a good choice for applications where limited capacity is needed. But for applications with larger files, HDD is likely to be the better choice.

The Cold Hard Facts

Predictably, one of the less upbeat portions of the program was the panel on venture capital. Jeffry Hinck of Crescendo Ventures shared that over the last three decades, 66% of venture-backed storage companies failed outright. Likewise, in the last three years, over 150 new storage ventures have been funded. Hinck's simple math was stark: over 100 companies in the current crop will not make it across the finish line. He did provide, however, a few helpful hints when dealing with the VC community. Less is more when it comes to money raised. The candidate's technical team is vitally important. All sides, Hinck said, should expect a seven-year investment horizon from inception. Finally, he identified a lot of exit potential in the next five years but, on the average, not great returns.

Dale Sheets from Stonefly Networks shared the company's story of successful dealing with the venture community. Jeremy Tennenbaum from Seagate spoke about corporate funding of storage ventures and the synergies Seagate looked for when selecting a venture to fund.

Day 2 of the conference concentrated for the most part on increased use of mobile storage in consumer electronics, the economics of on-demand video and what storage may be required in your living room or family room in the very near future. With the growth of multi-room entertainment requirements in the home, the concept of the home server (or several home servers) is not far off. Even some of the game modules from companies like Apple will demand much more storage than expected. Hitachi GST was at the conference, showing a 1-inch form factor drive which held 4Gbytes native. (A far cry from the RAMAC drives of the '50s, which held 5Mbytes in a form factor the size of two small refrigerators.)