CNN: Growing demand to store data
– Despite a relentless slide in the cost of keeping electronic information, executives at companies that store data for the business world say they expect to keep making money.
The reason? Look no further than what’s happening in millions of homes around the world, they say.
Just as businesses are building ever-larger databases and searching for new ways to manage the flood of information, consumers are storing all their music, photo and massive video files — and seeking better ways to organize it all.
They can do it because technological advances have enabled ever-greater amounts of information to be packed more densely into a given amount of disk space, at little extra cost to storage suppliers. That has increased capacity and made it far less expensive to keep big files.
“Ten years ago, a 1-gigabyte disk drive was a really great thing,” said Bob Schultz, senior vice president and manager of Hewlett-Packard Co.’s StorageWorks division. “Last Christmas, I bought a 1-gigabyte memory stick for my daughter’s camera. I suppose it cost $5,000 a decade ago for that disk drive, and I think the memory stick cost me $50.”
From home offices to corporate data centers, society is demanding ever-greater amounts of information, and easier ways to find it and back it up.
The data storage industry is seeing rising demand from several areas: Growth in mobile computing has increased reliance on centrally stored data that can be accessed remotely; natural disasters have persuaded corporate customers to back up data at multiple sites; and new data storage markets are emerging in places like Asia and Latin America.
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