How Enterprise Storage Will Lead the Way for Consumer Products

This post is sponsored by Samsung Business. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Enterprises require new and innovative solutions to meet growing storage demands. From IoT to Big Data, companies require storage capabilities that can aggregate huge amounts of information.

Indeed, businesses are becoming data-driven. A recent forecast from the International Data Corporation projects that the big data technology and services sector will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.1 percent from 2014-2019, with annual spending hitting a maximum $48.6 billion in 2019. All three submarkets of big data (software, services, and infrastructure) are also expected to grow through 2019.

As a result, technology companies must innovate to produce the hardware to make it happen. The commercial appetite businesses for big data–related software and infrastructure technology will lead to an ecosystem of new innovations. A perfect storm of technology needs—storage for huge amounts of data, secure cloud solutions, and processing—have led to a boom in innovation.

Samsung recently unveiled its 15.36TB SSD, the world’s largest-capacity storage device. The 2½-inch solid state drive (SSD), intended for use in enterprise storage, offers blazing speeds of 1200MBps. (A typical SSD peaks at about 550MBps.) Because it’s so small, IT managers can fit twice as many drives in a standard rack.

The SSD also sets a new standard for sustainability. The drive can support a full drive write per day, which means it can handle 15.36 TB of data on a single drive without failure during the five-year warranty period. In a statement to the press, Senior Vice President of Electronic Application Engineering Jung-bae Lee remarked that the drive was meant to meet an increasing demand for ultra-high-capacity SAS SSDs from enterprise storage system manufacturers.

Emerging solutions should focus on processing systems and storage needs for consumers. Innovations like the 15.36 TB SSD will trickle down from enterprise to consumer, and customers will enjoy the benefits of bigger, faster, less expensive storage to exceed their needs.

Fuel Customer Demand with Enterprise Solutions

Technology innovation often starts at the enterprise level and moves down to the consumer. Take the evolution of the huge IBM mainframes to personal computers or enterprise VoIP programs to Skype as examples.

The same goes for data storage. Although consumers may not see the need (yet!) for a 15TB drive, as the IoT extends to every corner of the home—from video doorbells or baby monitors that can record footage for hours to home media servers that can store decades worth of music— soon the technological possibilities and consumer demand will meet. At that time, consumers will reap some of the benefits of enterprise-level technological advancements, including lower prices (because the enterprise customers already covered the R&D costs), and product enhancements that occur only after technology has been on the market and in use for some time.
With the official unveiling of Samsung’s 15.36 TB drive, expect comparable models built for consumer-level data to hit the market soon. And that’s not the only innovation consumers can expect to see out of the corporate sector—although it is one of the biggest.

Rely on Big Data for Innovation

Virtually all of today’s technological innovations rely on storage. Take a fitness tracker as an example: quantitative data like heart rate, steps, and weight all require storage, as do more qualitative measures, like goals and food logs. Consumer mobile applications, watches, and smartphones also need a solid storage foundation with small, slim storage that is fast and reliable. Data storage leaders like Samsung provide the answer in flash storage.

As flexible, reliable, and fast SSDs take over the enterprise world, consumers can expect to see the same—especially in data-reliant smart home environments where everything from home monitoring to entertainment media requires instant access to vast amounts of data.

Innovation Moves in Two Directions

In a trend hardly ever seen in history, consumer technology also drives innovation back to the enterprise. From tablets and smart phones used for mobile videoconferencing to apps like Skype being used for business as a simple way to collaborate, businesses turn to what’s familiar to their employees to improve productivity and employee satisfaction. Increasingly, this means deploying consumer technology in the workplace, and IT departments working to adapt that technology to meet the enterprise’s needs, with enhanced security and business-specific apps.

Businesses concerned about employee wellness may use fitness trackers to ensure their employees get enough activity during the day—or even to monitor how many breaks they take where they leave their desk. Businesses could even measure air quality by tracking employees’ heart rates in certain areas of a building. The practical applications for consumer technology in the workplace evolve almost as fast as technology, itself.

Enterprises and consumers share a symbiotic relationship when it comes to technological innovation. Secondary markets can drive innovation to the enterprise, and solutions designed for a business can be scaled down to the consumer. When it comes to storage and technology innovations, the smartphone rings both ways, so to speak.

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