Storage Solutions Must Complement Changing Digital Lifestyles The current storage market is experiencing tremendous growth and will continue to do so exponentially. 2015 will further see an increase in areal density of HDDs which will mean higher capacity hard drives being available in the market. BY KHWAJA SAIFUDDIN, SENIOR DIRECTOR - SOUTH ASIA, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA, WD
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May 2015
here has been a growing demand for security, privacy and accessibility of data while travelling. Consumers are moving towards compact and higher capacity devices that offer mobility. Therefore, personal cloud solutions are likely to see a higher adoption rate, not just for consumers but for SMBs and SOHOs as well. Personal clouds allow consumers to access their data anywhere with the help of their smartphones, tablet or laptops, without physically carrying their storage drives along with them. WD offers My Cloud, a personal cloud solution for consumers, and My Cloud EX2 and My Cloud EX4 that are designed to fulfil data storage needs of creative professionals, producers, workgroups and anyone looking for a reliable way to save, share, back up, stream and manage their digital data. Our lives are surrounded by gadgets and screens. With ‘Internet of Things’ gaining popularity, we have reached an age of intelligent homes where devices are connected wirelessly to one another. Our My Passport Wireless gives you the freedom to transfer and backup your data wirelessly. Equipped with an SD card slot, it provides a practical way for consumers to ensure that they never run out of space. In addition, the number of SMBs that have developed across the country have increased manifold. To cater to their growing storage needs, Network Attached Storage (NAS) has increased popularity as an economical, secure and efficient method to store and access their data. Moreover, security has assumed greater importance in the country in recent times. With CCTV cameras being the most commonly deployed surveillance equipment, the need for reliable surveillance storage drives has increased. WD offers specialized WD Purple line of drives which are specifically meant for 24/7 uninterrupted surveillance requirements.
STORAGE MARKET
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India is witnessing a storage boom. It is continuously evolving and changing at a rapid pace with old technologies being 54
continuously replaced by newer, more advanced ones. According to a report by IDC, the digital universe in India is nearly doubling in size every two years and will multiply nine-times between 2013 and 2020—from 326 exabytes to 2.8 zeta bytes. IDC also forecasts that by 2020 Internet of Things (IoT) will represent almost 10 per cent of the data generated in India. Due to increasing security measures in every vertical from government to police stations, public transport to hotels, surveillance storage systems contribute substantially to data generation as well. Moreover, India is witnessing major improvements in economic policies, infrastructure and education leading to an increased acceptance and adoption of technology at various levels. According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International, the number of Internet users in India is estimated to grow to 354 million by June 2015. This coupled with the present government’s digital outlook is leading to an evolution in the process of creation and consumption of data at both enterprise and personal levels. While there is a visible data explosion in the urban areas, it is the smaller cities and towns that are surpassing expectations by rapidly embracing new technology. The report by the IAMAI and IMRB International notes an increase of 39 per cent over 2013 in the number of internet users in rural India. The number touched 101 million in October 2014 and is expected to be 138 million by June 2015. An increase in access to the internet through multiple platforms has led to an increase in data generation and hence, storage products, enabling the market to grow favourably.
VERTICAL SPECIFIC Data is continuously generated across verticals and hence, there is a growing demand for storage products to safeguard digital content. Different verticals require different storage requirements based
on the amount of data they generate on a daily basis. For example, Banking and Finance would require large amounts of storage due to the documents and records that need to be digitally filed. On the other hand, there are other segments that would primarily require surveillance storage in order to monitor and safeguard their data. WD provides solutions that best cater to the needs of a wide range of audiences. Be it consumers, SMBs, SOHOs, or even enterprises.
INNOVATIONS Changes in consumers’ lifestyles, work and home environments are leading them to demand access to data even outside of their work/ home environment. Hence, 2015 will further popularize the concept of personal cloud storage. Personal cloud solutions allow users to access their date on-the-go so that they are not confined within the walls of their home or workplace. According to GSMA, India is fourth largest market for smartphone users and will soon overtake US as world’s second largest internet market. People are creating and storing content at exponential levels. Thus, storage devices which will suit their lifestyle in terms of high capacity, easy access, backup solutions and mobility will be in huge demand. Storage devices are being developed to cater to the needs of the people and hence customization has increased in popularity. With government initiatives like Digital India and the development of Smart Cities, the demand for storage has increased tremendously. Surveillance has been brought to the foreground. It is picking up at a fast pace as more and more houses have started deploying surveillance cameras at a time where crimes are being reported at an unprecedented speed. In addition, HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording), a revolutionary new technology (yet to be commercially launched by WD) has the potential to increase the storage capacity of hard disk drives by multiple times.