Digital Data Explosion Drives Demand for Digital Storage Devices

While storage remains an indispensable IT need, the growing magnitude of the importance of this very basic IT function can be put into perspective by the fact that information is currently multiplying at a rate of over 65% each year and total data generated worldwide is projected to reach over 3ZB by the year 2020.

The digital era, which ushered in a new age of electronic data capture, has made it easy for private companies, government agencies and individuals to efficiently capture information thereby leaving an enormous data trail. In the enterprise sector, widespread implementation of CRM and ERP solutions have contributed towards data explosion by triggering exponential growth in the volume of information generated about partners, suppliers and customers. The coming years are forecast to witness the number of companies managing over 10TB of data to double. Against this backdrop, the critical importance of storage comes to the fore as companies seek to overcome storage performance limitations.

The criticality of the need for storage can be summed up by the fact that in the modern wired world, digital information represents one of the most valuable assets for companies, loss of which could threaten the competitiveness and the very existence of companies in the marketplace. Also, government regulations that mandate preservation of data, additionally heightens the need for storage. Given that the value of data is time sensitive, timely availability of data, and easy accessibility of data when required represent the two vital factors for effectively managing data in an enterprise. This brings to fore the growing importance of storage and its ability to support a company’s changing business goals, and needs.

Despite the sweeping changes in storage technologies such as FCoE, iSCSI and SAS, HDDs continue to remain the dominant storage technology. A key factor cited for the sustained dominance of HDDs is the continuous technology improvements achieved in recording and storage density. Technological innovations in both magnetic disks and magnetic heads have and will continue to facilitate improvements in HDD recording density, which in turn will help HDDs sustain their dominance in the storage devices market.

Datacentre expansion and growing proliferation of cloud storage services are driving demand for enterprise storage servers, which in turn is expected to benefit demand for HDDs, especially SED HDDs. HDDs are still the most preferred lowest-cost storage solution for high-capacity enterprise servers.

In the digital optical disc storage space, Blu-ray discs will continue to cannibalize sales of HD-DVDs, given the numerous advantages such as greater storage capacity, and support for HD audio/video formats. A single-layer blu-ray disc holds up to 27GB of data i.e. two hours of HD video or 13 hours of standard video while a double-layer blu-ray disc holds up to 50GB of data i.e. 4.5 hours of HD video or 20 hours of standard video.

In the removable storage market, the emergence of USB 3.0 specification for high-speed data transfer is expected to drive demand for USB flash drives in the coming years.

As stated by the new market research report on digital storage devices by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., Europe represents the largest regional market worldwide. AsiaPac is forecast to emerge as the fastest growing market with a CAGR of 3.1% over the analysis period. Growth in the region will be supported by growing consumption of entertainment services, robust economic growth, spiraling sales of computing devices, and increased need to store, transfer, and share content. Rapid mushrooming of SMBs in India and China, growing popularity of enterprise mobility, rise of the BYOD phenomenon, and growing base of mobile workforce are also expected to drive growth in the market.

Key players covered in the report include Imation Corp., Intel Corporation, Kingmax Technology Inc., Kingston Technology Corporation, LenovoEMC, Micron Technology Inc., Lexar Media Inc., PNY Technologies Inc., RITEK Corporation, Samsung Electronics, SanDisk Corp., Seagate Technology plc, LaCie S.A.S, Sony Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Transcend Information Inc., Verbatim Americas, LLC, and Western Digital Technologies Inc..

The research report titled Digital Storage Devices: A Global Strategic Business Report ($4,950, 337 pages) provides a review of market trends, growth drivers, product innovations and launches, and strategic industry activities of major companies worldwide. It provides market estimates and projections for all geographic markets including the US, Canada, Japan, Europe (France, Germany, Italy, UK, Spain, Russia and Rest of Europe), AsiaPac (China, India, and Rest of AsiaPac), Latin America, and rest of world. Product segments analysed in the report include HDD, SSD, optical disc (Blu-Ray, DVD, CD), and flash drive (USB flash memory drive and others).