Quantum 2019 Predictions: Exciting Times Ahead for Data and Storage

Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019

As we look toward 2019, the fast-paced growth of video across all industries plus the progress being made in autonomous vehicles and AI technologies are at the forefront of our minds. Combine these trends with the growth the market is seeing in areas such as machine learning, IoT, flash infrastructures and more, and we are poised to experience an increase in daily data production in 2019 that is unlike anything the world has seen before. The net result of these growth trends means that existing storage infrastructures will need to keep pushing the boundaries of evolution to keep up. As the team at Quantum looks to the coming year, we're focused on the trends that are driving increases in data and the types of data seeing the most growth, and how storage technologies and tiers will need to evolve to effectively handle all the different data scenarios being presented. Here are our top five predictions for 2019:

1. Video content will grow exponentially, across many industries: Video and video-like data will constitute over 50 percent of all data being generated, from surveillance footage; consumer images, voice, medical imagery, IoT, entertainment and social media. Large and unstructured data is often 50 times larger than the average corporate database. Video is unique, and it is not typically a good fit for traditional backup; it cannot be compressed or deduplicated, it doesn't work well with replication, snaps or clones, and ingest speed is critical. This "unstructured" data - predominantly video and images - is projected to surpass 100 Zetabytes worldwide by 2020. Expect enterprise data services to be increasingly optimized for these data sets, with infrastructure optimized for ingest processing and the full life cycle management of this form of data.
2. NVMe will revolutionize media workflow infrastructures: NVMe will finally allow our customers to unlock the true potential of flash - dramatically reducing latencies and enabling IP-based infrastructures and workflows, while reducing expensive fiber infrastructure costs. It also sets the stage for truly software defined infrastructures and can free up hardware resources to focus on advanced analytics.
3. Autonomous vehicle development will drive enormous data creation: As testing continues in 2019, cars are on the cusp of Level 3 autonomy, so we can anticipate new workflows for the test vehicles as they push forward from this point. Watch for other vehicles to become autonomous as well in land, sea, and air. Data storage in the form of flash, disk, tape and the cloud - and the ability to seamlessly move data between these types of storage to balance access and cost factors - will be key in supporting automotive vehicle development.
4. Tape will emerge as a fundamental part of hyperscale infrastructures: Tape and the cloud will intersect and co-exist, helping to protect more infrastructures against malware and ransomware. In the process, many companies will recognize the unique benefits of LTO tape and public cloud storage. Increasingly, companies will adopt the view that tape is not about offsite storage; it's about offline storage. Further, it is possible we'll actually see the tape market GROW in 2019 based on hyperscaler usage as long-term storage.
5. Rise of AI and analytics: Video analytics can provide 100x the value of numerical analytics. Customers will increasingly need deep media catalogues that provide visibility to all the media assets at their disposal, whatever form are they in, and that show who has edited them. The deep media catalogues will need to be much richer than just a file system to accommodate more analytics functions. With video surveillance, the analytics will need to analyze situations such as: Are those two people having an argument? Are either of them holding a weapon? Are the people at the end of a long grocery store checkout line getting frustrated? Applications such as these will provide tremendous potential, given the right tools, to deliver these answers and to provide advanced data services for video and growth for video applications.

One thing is certain. 2019 will be an exciting year for the data storage market and for new advancements that will change the way we understand and interact with data and the world around us. 

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