HITS

HGST: Huge Size of Today’s Data is Creating More Challenges Than Ever

The tremendous size of much of the data that media and entertainment (M&E) companies are regularly using these days is making it necessary for many of them to change the economics of their data, according to Western Digital subsidiary HGST.

Shifting to an object storage solution like HGST’s ActiveScale allows M&E companies to facilitate a “data forever architecture,” according to the company, which introduced ActiveScale 5.1 in the fall. At the time of the introduction, HGST said companies looking to increase their competitiveness are gaining valuable insights from massive amounts of data over longer time periods, and ActiveScale 5.1 helps customers implement a data forever strategy with seamless scalability of up to 52 petabytes and extreme data durability required for long-term data storage.

The company on Jan. 2 highlighted just what kind of content is generating the most data in our “media-rich future,” noting that “long gone are the days of” film and standard definition.

“From cameras that can capture 25,000 frames per second” in high-definition (HD) in some cases to movie trailers created by artificial intelligence (AI), “data is growing at an astonishing rate,” it pointed out, adding that an organization’s data infrastructure not only needs to scale, but also must “flex with technology evolutions.”
Of course, M&E companies are already going well beyond HD, to 4K and 8K Ultra High-Def (UHD). Companies are already transitioning to 8K and that “may use more than 100X the capacity of HD,” HGST said. High Dynamic Range (HDR) color space, meanwhile, “brings 60X more color combinations than previous TV standards,” it said. Also, “a single film can produce over 2 Petabytes of data,” it said, adding: “In the next decade, that number could reach 1 Exabyte.”

In addition, AI and virtual reality (VR) “will forever change the way we consume media and how we approach big data and fast data,” the company said. Wireless VR is “set to generate an additional 21,000 Petabytes of traffic by 2021,” it noted, adding: “Volumetric 3D camera capture technology takes in as much as much as 400 gigabytes per second of data.” AI “will drive 95% of customer interactions by 2025,” it predicted.

Also projected by HGST: “More than 106 Exabytes of new digital storage will be used for digital archiving and content conversion and preservation by 2022.” Meanwhile, online video is expected to account for 60% of mobile data traffic by 2020 and 82% of all consumer IP traffic is expected to be video by 2021, it said.