Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates is one of The Station’s go-to storage analysts. He’s well-informed, been around along while to see the big picture, and always has something newsy to contribute to the conversation.
Coughlin’s annual report on digital storage in media and entertainment is no doubt a document that is of interest to a lot of IT managers. His latest, the 147-page “2010 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment,” came out this week. The report offers in-depth analysis of the role of digital storage in all aspects of professional media and entertainment.
In his report, Coughlin projects digital storage demand for content capture, post production, content distribution and content archiving for the next five years.
Highlights include:
⢠Between 2009 and 2015, Coughlin predicts that the media and entertainment industry will see about a 10X increase in the required digital storage capacity and about a 12X growth in storage capacity shipments per year (from 4,094 PB to 47,291 PB).
⢠Total revenue for media and entertainment storage systems will increase about 2.1X from 2009 through 2015 ($3.0 B to $6.2 B).
⢠Coughlin estimates that in 2009, about 86 percent of the total storage media shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was tape, with about 10 percent HDD, 4 percent optical and 0.3 percent flash memory (mostly in digital cameras and some media distribution servers).
⢠By 2015, tape units will decline slightly to 83 percent, HDDs increase to about 14 percent, optical decline to 2 percent and flash doubling in percentage to 0.6 percent.
⢠Total revenue for storage media will increase about 4X from 2009 through 2015 ($415 M to $1,642 M).
The Station knows that there is great interest in digital video storage. Did you know, for example, that the new DreamWorks 3D movie, “How to Train Your Dragon,” comprises a whopping 100TB of capacity, basically requiring its own data center?
If you’re interested in purchasing the full report, go here or email Coughlin at this address.