Coughlin Sees Exponential Storage Growth in Entertainment Industry

By Greg McNevin

November 17 2008: A new report on digital storage for media and entertainment is unsurprisingly projecting strong growth, driven by higher resolution, more channels for content distribution and lower costs for production.

Due to be presented at the 2009 Storage Visions Conference, the report covers drivers and projections for the use of digital storage in all aspects of the professional media and entertainment industry.

Compiled by Coughlin Associates, the 2009 Media and Entertainment Storage Report says that digital storage for the media and entertainment market is skyrocketing due to the exponentially large amounts of digital content being created with the industry’s increasing shift towards digital means of production.

More specifically, the analysts at Coughlin expect that between 2008 and 2014 there will be a 12 or more times increase in digital storage requirements, and upwards of 16 times growth in storage capacity shipments per year (from 2,424 PB to 39,722 PB).

The company claims that in 2008, 85 percent of all storage capacity was used for content archiving and preservation, while by 2012 it believes this will increase to 97 percent due to improved ROI on converted content and lower costs for conversion and preservation.

In 2008 it estimates that 57 percent of the total storage media shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was tape with about 32 percent optical, 7 percent hard disk and 4 percent flash memory (and most of this was digital camera and some media distribution servers).

By 2014, however, the firm estimates that tape units will increase to 61 percent, optical will slip to around 15 percent, hard disk drives to jump to 19 percent and flash increasing to a modest 5 percent.

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