Shift In The Technology Changing The Storage Industry

The shifting information technology market dynamics is disrupting the traditional IT industry. It has become a regular process happening and is redefining the way people lead their lives. SMBs are always looking at technology innovations to enable new business models which will help them improve business efficiencies and increase profit. Enterprise mobility is one of those initiatives. Companies are backing the service model by investing in advanced tech infrastructure and R&D that can plug gaps in the existing tools.

If there was one trend that really picked up the steam in 2015, it would have to be the Internet of Things (IoT). Enterprises are taking a serious look at investments into IoT and how it can be leveraged to drive business growth. Consumers are adopting wearables and connected home devices at a breakneck pace. In fact, a study conducted by Seagate’s Market Research team unveiled how IoT is expected to generate more than 20 zettabytes, or 20 trillion gigabytes, of data by 2025, underlined by the increase in broadband penetration and access speeds creating a connected world.

With growing security concerns in daily life, improved video surveillance has also become an urgent priority for both the public and private sectors. More companies and consumers are migrating to high-definition digital video solutions and more active cameras. And with more government regulations kicking in, companies now have to retain more video for a longer time. In fact, of the 3.5 zettabytes of data created in the past two years, nearly 50 percent was created by video surveillance.

Key technology trends in 2016

Video surveillance and surveillance infrastructure will play a significant role with reference to India’s plan to build 100 smart cities by 2020. The need for advanced security and IT infrastructure, increased IT spending and the need for video analytics and remote monitoring are the trends driving the video surveillance market in India.

According to Seagate’s ‘Video Surveillance Trend Report’, 85 percent of nearly 1,100 system integrators and enterprise IT executives globally across a wide range of industries, said that the key reason driving video surveillance is safety and security. The need to optimize workflows (53 percent) and regulatory compliance (48 percent) were also picked as the main drivers for using video surveillance.

The IoT market will continue its phenomenal growth as emerging business models built around the technology become more prevalent. The prices of sensors or embedded “things” will continue to drop while broadband penetration will continue to increase. Both these developments will allow IoT to become a reality for more people. However, security and privacy concerns stemming from hacks and potential misuse of private information may hinder that growth. At the same time, providers of IoT platforms are currently fragmented and the industry would benefit greatly from building a better ecosystem where data is not fenced and is shared more broadly.

2016 will also see the explosion of 4K and 8K video content, creating new storage demands for the video creation industry and even consumers. For example, filming in 4K takes up about seven times more data than 1080p.

Lastly, with the rampant and easy access to rich content, there is going to be a whole new set of clients and some of them are robots, augmented virtual reality machines, 3D printing, and surveillance, a new class of entertainment devices or drones. All these things are new clients that are going to take advantage of this massive amount of data and also contribute to the massive amount of data.

The key growth areas for storage industry

Mr. Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager for India & SAARC, Seagate Technology, shared his opinion about the industry, “We see great market opportunities lie ahead of us for us to continue to grow. Data consumption and creation, along with the increase in global internet connectivity, continue to drive petabyte growth at rates that are significantly greater than the areal density growth rate.”

Mr. Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager for India & SAARC, Seagate Technology

The government’s focus on smart cities and the rising need for better security makes it imperative for us to expand our forte in the video surveillance market in India. Also, Mobility and cloud will continue to shape the way both consumers and businesses create, access, and share information in the coming year. Today, eight out of ten compute devices are tablets and smartphones, and seven of ten notebooks have slimmer form factors for increased mobility. This move towards increased mobility is shifting the location of data. For example, in 2010, more than half of the storage was shipped into the PC market. Our research shows that by 2020, that predominance will dramatically shift to non-PC storage.

Emerging cloud economics and technology needs continue to disrupt traditional IT adoption and management practices. The storage industry can help design architectures that leverage the latest advances in HDD, Flash, and software with no compromises.

Growth to expect in 2016

The storage industry is evolving and the continued robust demand for storage which gives us the opportunity to continue to build on our core business. Cloud, mobility, IoT, Big Data and providing efficient solutions for surveillance infrastructure will continue to drive change in data consumption patterns and create new demands from consumers and businesses. This will allow the industry to engage with new customers and, in turn, define and develop new technologies and solutions to address market needs.