Collecting 2016 predictions: Nik Stanbridge on data storage and archiving

One the things that "sells" blog content is predictions: keyword phrases such as "IT Predictions" "SEO predictions" "tech predictions" followed by the year predictions are made for. Since we are fast approaching 2016, willy nilly, I had to start looking them up; after all, predictions will become a trending buzzword for the next couple of months. Which, come to think of it, is a prediction itself, isn’t it? You can tell from the screenshot posted above that this post is about Nik Stanbridge post on what he foresees to be the trends in storage starting from 2016.

Stanbridge is the VP Marketing at Arkivum - a company that deals in data archiving services - so it is possible he knows a bit more about this than the rest of us. His main prediction is that data storage has to undergo a disruptive change very very soon. Not really a really surprising prediction - as he himself will probably acknowledge - since internet of things strongly implies it and others have repeatedly pointed out.

The devil being in the details, here are his five predictions:

1. Body cams (think Police, for instance) are going to need a fair amount of storage
2. Growth of Archiving as a Service (AaaS) and
3. Archiving becoming conceptually separate from Backup (not sure there aren’t the same, in fact)
4. Storage capacity limits being reached much faster because of drop in the price of many data gathering equipment that requires storage (very similar to prediction 1)
5. Digital preservation will require ultra-reliable storage (the vaguest of all predictions)

Why you should read it?

First, because his two main examples of forces pushing data storage towards disruption are very interesting: police body cams and increasingly cheap scientific test kits. You can find more about just how much police body cams gobble up in terms of data space in his blog post here.
In my view, Prediction #1 and #4 are really two examples of what drives the changing rate of data influx, so there is really no need to make separate predictions.

Secondly, because it will force you to consider the difference between data backup and data archiving and ponder if might need to implement strategies for both. Personally, I am not sure Prediction #2 and #3 are separate entities, but maybe that’s for another time.

Finally, because it reminds us we really do have a problem: a lot of our information is becoming digitized while at the same time digital preservation strategies are quite chaotic at present. Moreover, we tend to think really short-term when we talk about digital preservation; Stanbridge himself implies a quarter of a century storage to be on the long-term horizon, which is somewhat disappointing.

As predictions go, the one about body cams is the most concrete and rather compelling. Whether or not it can start (by itself or in combination with other factors) a revolutions in 2016 is still open future...