A study conducted in 2010 amongst SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers) members that is included in the seventh annual report from Coughlin Associates on digital storage in media and entertainment shows the following trends:
Digital storage requirements are exploding due to use of higher resolution and stereoscopic content in the media and entertainment industry.
Active archiving will drive increased use of HDD storage for “archiving’ applications supplementing tape for long term archives.
Flash memory will find wider use in cameras and content distribution.
Between 2011 and 2016 the media and entertainment industry will likely see about a 7.7X increase in the required digital storage capacity and about a 5.6X growth in storage capacity shipments per year (from 11,248 PB to 62,736 PB).
Total revenue for media and entertainment storage systems will increase about 1.7X from 2011 through 2016 ($3.8bn to $6.4bn).
About 57% of the total storage capacity will be used for content archiving and preservation in 2011. The report estimates that this will increase to 60% of total capacity by 2016 due to more efficient and cost effective conversion services, lower overall storage costs and a greater ROI on long tail content.
The report predicts that in 2011 about 43.6% of the total storage media shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was tape with about 39.1% HDD, 17.1% optical and 0.2% flash memory (mostly in digital cameras and some media distribution servers).
The 2011 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report is now available from Coughlin Associates through www.tomcoughlin.com.
