The document discusses technology trends for 2012 according to analysts and technology providers. Some of the key trends mentioned include increased adoption of tablets, mobile applications, cloud computing, big data analytics, virtualization, security threats from mobile malware and targeted attacks, and growth in unified communications adoption among small and medium businesses. Technology is seen as an important enabler for businesses and consumerization of IT is driving changes. Mobility, cloud computing, and data storage will continue growing in importance.

1. APP STORES
IT MARKETS?
CAN
REPLACE
BY SANJAY MOHAPATRA
sanjay@smechannels.com
26
COVER STORY
SME CHANNELS
DECEMBER 2011
TECHNOLOGY TRENDS 2012
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2. W
ith the gradual fading of
2011, partners and SMEs
are waiting for the forecasts
and predictions about tech-
nology trends for next year
by the major vendors so that they could wait
and invest on the right technology. As per Gart-
ner the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for
2012 will revolve around media tablets, mobile-
centric applications and interfaces, contextual
and social user experience, Internet of things,
app stores and marketplaces, next-generation
analytics, big data, in-memory computing,
extreme low-energy servers and cloud comput-
ing. Woven throughout that list are opportuni-
ties that involve mobility, both on the front-end
and back-end, and the incorporation of con-
sumer mobile devices in the enterprise.
Similarly, Deloitte Consulting’s principal and
CTO Mark White, says that Mobility, social,
analytics, cloud and cyber are technology forces
each impacting business today. The intersection
of these represents an opportunity for new busi-
ness technology value and innovation.
Truly mobile computing, social media, virtu-
alization and cloud computing are going to be
major base of technology in coming year and
beyond.
As per Ajay Goel, Managing Director, India
and SAARC, Symantec, “Among the various
security incidents that made waves in 2011, it
will go down as the year in which the founda-
tion for the successor of the infamous Stuxnet
was laid. It will also be remembered as the year
the mobile malware movement began in real
earnest. Finally, 2011 was undoubtedly the
year of the targeted attack; with a concerning
number of incidents involving compromised
legitimate digital certificates.
Looking back on 2011 also gives us a per-
spective of what we can expect to see in 2012,
including:
Advanced persistent threats (APTs) contin-
ued to target industrial control-related organi-
zations, while critical infrastructure protection
program awareness and engagement waned.
A recent Symantec Critical Infrastructure
Protection (CIP) Survey found that companies
are generally less engaged in their government’s
CIP programs this year when compared to
last. In fact, only 37 percent of companies are
completely or significantly engaged in such pro-
grams this year, versus 56 percent in 2010.
When combined with recent revelations
around the Duqu threat whose purpose was to
gather intelligence data and assets from organi-
zations such as manufacturers of components
commonly found in industrial control environ-
ments, the findings of the CIP Survey are par-
ticularly troubling. At this point in time, there is
no reason to assume the attackers behind Duqu
were unable to gather the intelligence they were
looking for.
As the use of smart mobile devices has
exploded, the risks surrounding them – particu-
larly mobile malware and data loss – have also
experienced unprecedented growth.
According to Gartner, sales of smartphones
will exceed 461 million by end of the year,
surpassing PC shipments in the process. This
explosion has captured cybercriminals’ atten-
tion and as a result, the year 2011 saw significant
real growth in the amount of mobile malware.
From malware seeking to embarrass victims
to malware exploiting premium rate number
billing, to malware focused on information
theft, it’s undeniable that 2011 was the first
year mobile malware presented a true threat
to enterprises and consumers. The rise of the
tablet has also presented concerns around the
The year 2012 is not
very far from now. The
tech providers and
partners have already
started getting ready
for the realignment –
at least at the mental
level. It is very much
for the reason that
people should invest
on latest and right
technology.
AS PER GARTNER, THE TOP 10 STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
FOR 2012 WILL REVOLVE AROUND MEDIA TABLETS, MOBILE-CENTRIC
APPLICATIONS AND INTERFACES, CONTEXTUAL AND SOCIAL USER
EXPERIENCE, INTERNET OF THINGS, APP STORES AND MARKETPLACES,
NEXT-GENERATION ANALYTICS, BIG DATA, IN-MEMORY COMPUTING,
EXTREME LOW-ENERGY SERVERS AND CLOUD COMPUTING.
SME CHANNELS
DECEMBER 2011
27
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3. threat of well-meaning and malicious insiders
that can fly under the radar of IT.
Cybercrime’s spread from the criminal
underground to the business mainstream was
highlighted by a surge in targeted attacks
Symantec’s November Intelligence Report
shows that targeted attacks are becoming more
prevalent in 2011. Large enterprises with more
than 2,500 employees, received the greatest
number of attacks, with 36.7 targeted attacks
being blocked each day. By contrast, small-to-
medium sized businesses, with less than 250
employees, had 11.6 targeted attacks blocked
daily during the same period.
The increasing number of targeted attacks
is being driven at least in part by competitive
advantage as companies explore digital espio-
nage to acquire sensitive, proprietary data from
competitors.
High-profilehacksofSecureSocketsLayer(SSL)
Certificate providers and malware threats that
misuse SSL certificates became an issue in 2011
Publicity and public ire about SSL-related
breaches such as DigiNotar and Comodo
reached an all-time high in 2011. Malware
threats increasingly came from sources using
SSL Certificates that cyber criminals either stole
or fraudulently acquired.
As per Kaushal Veluri- Director, Channels
& Alliances, India Subcontinent, Citrix, the
key trend in 2012 will be BYO3, Workshift-
ing and Desktop Virtualisation. Indian market
will witness increase in tablet adoption, people
adapting to workshifting and employee base
demanding workshifting concept.
According to Citrix Improved information
security drives 92 percent of desktop virtualiza-
tion deployments. Ninety one percent of orga-
nizations surveyed have implemented desktop
virtualization or plan to do so before the end
of 2013 according to new global research com-
missioned by Citrix. Of those organizations, 92
percent are adopting desktop virtualization to
improve information security.
Allowing employees to be more mobile
instead of being locked in at an office location,
to use their own device for computing, to use
cloud based applications/services, using 3G
wireless access will be a norm in many com-
panies and technologies like Desktop Virtual-
ization will enable companies to adopt these
changes and enable mobile workstyles.
Syed Masroor-Head, TESCO,NetApp India
predicts that there will be Scale Out of NAS
besides other things.
According to IDC, non structured file- type
data is increasing at the fastest rate and is pre-
dicted to occupy 80% of the total storage capac-
ity by 2012. Network Attached Storage (NAS)
is the best option for storing non-structured
data that maybe scattered throughout millions
of files. Scale-out NAS marks a new trend in
storage. The scale-up model is coming to an
end, be it NAS or SAN, much in the same way
CPU technology is evolving from frequency
improvement to kernel enhancement. Scale-
out NAS, though helping enterprise users to
take on the challenges in surging demands for
storing non-structured data with its scalability
and manageability, has weaknesses in some
functions such as snapshot management and
restoration, remote duplication-based disaster
tolerance, and multi-protocol support. Despite
its weaknesses, scale-out NAS shall witness its
users increasing constantly and its ability to deal
with the explosive growth of data
Moving to One Wire Network convergence
shall be a big trend for both storage and net-
working segments. Network convergence is
bringing together Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NAS,
IP and clustering into a single physical layer that
can be shared and optimized to make the other
trends we outlined here possible. Without the
right network, none of the other trends would
be changing the world. The move to one wire
will happen in many phases, over a number of
years, but it will happen, and 10Gb Ethernet
(10GbE) with the new Data Center Bridging
(DCB) enhancements will be the key technol-
ogy to enable network convergence.
The India Enterprise Storage market is evolv-
ing and the momentum is shifting towards
Ethernet in a big way. The underlying reason
for this is a ten-fold increase in Ethernet speeds.
We are seeing increased adoption of 10G in
data centers, which will drive economies of
scale. This in turn is catalysing the shift towards
deployment of Ethernet Storage. Significant
advances in Ethernet technology like 10 Gigabit
and FCoE driven by key storage networking
players have made this a promising option. It
offers the speed and reliability of Fibre Channel
at the cost of Ethernet.
NAS for Desktop Virtualization will gain
further momentum in the year 2012 along with
NAS for industry players like that of Oracle and
Microsoft.
Rajiv Bhalla, Associate Vice President &
Country Head, Sales & Marketing, NEC India
Pvt. Ltd. says that the unified communication
market in India is estimated at Rs. 6,000 crore
for the year 2010-2011. The market grew by
35-40 percent; over last year. The UC market is
“WE WILL CONTINUE TO
DEVELOP TECHNOLOGIES,
SERVICES, AND SOFTWARE
PLATFORMS THAT ENABLE
OUR CUSTOMERS TO
LEVERAGE THE NETWORK
TO SOLVE THEIR GREATEST
BUSINESS CHALLENGES.”
B RAGHAVENDRAN, VICE- PRESIDENT AND
HEAD PARTNER ORGANIZATION CISCO INDIA
AND SAARC
“2011 WAS UNDOUBT-
EDLY THE YEAR
OF THE TARGETED
ATTACK; WITH A CON-
CERNING NUMBER OF
INCIDENTS.”
AJAY GOEL, MANAGING DIRECTOR,
INDIA AND SAARC, SYMANTEC
SME CHANNELS
DECEMBER 2011
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4. moving into a significant phase where overall
awareness and customer hand-holding is nec-
essary. Greater UC effectiveness like reduced
TCO, greater efficiencies and optimization of
resources need to be validated through case
studies. Among the verticals where we have
seen and will see greater adoption of UC are:
hospitality, SME & healthcare.
There has been a massive evolution and
adaptability of unified communications in
Hospitality segment of late. Hoteliers are effec-
tively using unified communication solutions to
improve their guest experience, reduce the total
cost of ownership and provide access to their
customers anytime, anywhere. With the influx
of technology and sophisticated solutions,
conventional sources of earning revenue have
dwindled. With the intention of increasing rev-
enue the hotels are looking at offering a bouquet
of value added services like movie on demand,
music downloads, interactive games which will
entice the guest and also add revenue.
Companies today are aware of the potential
that exists in the SME sector and are intro-
ducing customized and cost effective com-
munication solutions for small and medium
enterprises. According to a survey by Access
Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
India SMBs spent approximately $165 million
on unified communications (UC) in 2010,
with close to three fourths of all businesses
deploying UC applications. Instant messaging
applications are ubiquitous and hosted audio &
web conferencing applications show significant
usage among businesses having 10+ employees.
Going forward, I foresee the SME sector to be
big adopter of UC solutions.
Another lucrative vertical for UC is health-
care. Healthcare is a communication intensive
business. Good communication has a profound
effect on the quality of delivery in healthcare
organization. Healthcare organizations are
increasingly facing challenges – the ongoing
pressures to improve operating margins while
meeting the increasing demands for high-qual-
ity patient care. Implementing a Unified Com-
munications (UC) framework can address these
concerns by providing solutions that improve
collaboration between medical and adminis-
trative staff, enabling faster and better decision
making.
The overall UC market has matured and
evolved significantly in 2011. The most notable
change has been the shift in emphasis from
broad UC portfolios toward fuller UC suites.
UC is set to become all pervasive and is set to
be a game changer in the way we communicate.
Adoption of UC will come from unconventional
verticals like SMEs, healthcare and hospitality.
As the technology becomes more main stream
its adoption is only going to increase.
Bobby Mon, Head-Enterprise Business, SMB,
Dell India predicts of IT being the key enabler,
consumerization of IT, mobility, cloud com-
puting, storage, etc. will continue to grow and
SMBs will bring the next wave of growth for our
country.
IT is now being seen as a key enabler for
almost all business activities - from sales and
marketing to internal organizations, training
and customer outreach - and is no more just
about automating the back office. Also, most
customers, especially the larger enterprises, will
continue to look for vendors that offer a het-
erogeneous approach and do not tie them into
proprietary technology costs.
Today’s Virtual Era is best defined by the
blurring of lines between consumer and com-
mercial technology. People no longer differenti-
ate between consumer electronics, computing
and even entertainment industries – they just
know they want seamless, always on connectiv-
ity to their social networks and content. Con-
sumerization is driving a new mindset – one
of open collaboration and freedom with the
blurring of work and home, emergence of new
mobile devices and changing expectations of IT
and their work experience.
There is a huge change underway in end user
devices. We see the rapid adoption of mobile
devices such as broadband-enabled handhelds,
tablet PCs, laptops and other portable Internet
endpoints creating new opportunities and
challenges for Dell, our partners and custom-
ers. This phenomenon is creating the first truly
mobile workforce and virtual workplace, giving
people the ability to work when and how they
choose. We, on our part are investing heavily in
these areas; not just devices like smartphones,
tablets, laptops, etc. but in the systems manage-
ment appliances, desktop virtualization, etc.
Given the focus on driving cost efficiencies,
productivity and business growth, we will con-
tinue to see technologies such as virtualization
lead the way. Desktop virtualization would
be critical in this aspect. As more and more
medium and large-sized companies accelerate
the need for dynamic and converged infrastruc-
ture to support the business needs of next eco-
“AS WE ENTER 2012, TWO
KEY AREAS THAT WOULD
BE CRITICAL TO THE
GROWTH OF BIG ENTER-
PRISES AS WELL SME
BUSINESSES ARE CLOUD
COMPUTING AND MOVING
INTO THE ERA OF BIG
DATA.”
RAJESH JANEY, PRESIDENT, INDIA AND
SAARC, EMC CORPORATION
“CONSUMERIZATION
OF IT, MOBILITY, CLOUD
COMPUTING, STORAGE,
ETC. WILL CONTINUE
TO GROW AND SMBS
WILL BRING THE NEXT
WAVE OF GROWTH FOR
OUR COUNTRY.”
BOBBY MON, HEAD-ENTERPRISE
BUSINESS, SMB, DELL INDIA
SME CHANNELS
DECEMBER 2011
30
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5. nomic cycle, and look for optimized utilization
of resources such as space, power & cooling and
people, virtualization will help drive improved
ROI and efficiency.
Cloud computing is at a tipping point and we
see it as a big opportunity for growing businesses
to keep up with their growth without having to
invest in and manage their infrastructure. IDC
predicts cloud computing will capture 25% of
IT spending by the year 2012, For the Indian
market conditions, this is the right time to offer
such services to ease infrastructure manage-
ment leveraging the cloud. Factors that can
trigger this model include companies looking
for optimizing resources and reducing capital
expenditure. Secondly, this model will be great
help to companies who do not have mature IT
teams and skilled manpower.
Storage, especially for SMBs, is more impor-
tant than ever. Data is growing at exponential
rates, with IDC projecting a 60% growth rate
in the digital universe this year, or nearly 1.8
zettabytes of data by the end of the year. That’s a
10-fold increase over the past five years. Today,
there’s still a need to secure data but there’s also
a demand for data to be shared so that remote
workers, partners, customers and even mobile
applications have several access points, anytime,
anywhere. We believe the future, especially for
SMBs, lies in Ethernet-based storage technolo-
gies largely because of Ethernet’s ubiquity, cus-
tomers’ understanding of TCP/IP, lower total
cost of ownership and the benefits of Ethernet
when dealing with virtualization. For IT profes-
sionals, that means faster and safer configura-
tion and monitoring, a single pane of glass for
management, lower operational expenses due
to a lesser need for training, and a storage offer-
ing that scales to meet the growing number of
virtual machines.
SMBs will bring the next wave of growth for
our country. SMBs cross a wildly diverse mish-
mash of industries, sizes, and offerings, each
with its own unique objectives and visions – but
they share the desire to succeed; the challenge
is to make their IT a true contributor to that
success.
Rajesh Janey, President, India and SAARC,
EMC Corporation, says, “As we enter 2012, two
key areas that would be critical to the growth of
big enterprises as well SME businesses are Cloud
computing and moving into the era of Big Data.”
As per a study in 2011 by EMC-Zinnov Con-
sulting, there is an increased preference of cloud
adoption over the next five years in India. The
total cloud market in India, currently at US$ 400
million will reach a market value of US$ 4.5 bil-
lion by 2015; of which private cloud adoption will
dominate and account for US$ 3.5 billion in rev-
enues, growing at over 60 percent. The study also
highlights that private cloud market will create 1
lakh jobs by 2015 from 10,000 today – an oppor-
tunity for students and the workforce – compa-
nies today are under-skilled in addressing cloud
computing implementations in India. Though
much of the industry is yet to adopt the cloud but
due to implementation simplicity and cost saving
purpose cloud is going to be the game changer
for Indian IT. However EMC believes cloud is
not only about cost saving and implementation
simplicity but also a new source of revenue gen-
eration. The revenue generation can be achieved
through adopting the IT as a Service model.
Digital data is now everywhere – in every
sector, in every economy, in every organization
and user of digital technology. While this topic
might once have concerned only the data geeks,
Big Data is now relevant to leaders across every
sector, and consumers of products and services
stand to benefit from its application. The ability
to store, aggregate, and combine data and then
use the results to perform deep analyses have
become even more accessible. In a nutshell, the
premise behind big data is scarily simple. Many
of the newer IT-based value propositions are
being built around gathering and leveraging
vast amounts of information. More data, more
value and it’s a trend to watch out for in 2012.
The discussion on Big Data is at a prelimi-
nary stage with CIOs and IT Managers today,
and the tempo is picking up real fast. Reason
for this is that CIOs are faced with enormous
amount of important data sets and are turning
to mine them for insights for business value.
There is a lot of exponentially more raw infor-
mation available to gather and harvest. Also,
most enterprises are contemplating to virtualize
and move to the cloud at some point. All this
requires a pre-determined plan of moving large
data assets, securing them and a plan to drive
analytics. Verticals that have been traditionally
heavy consumer-centric and IT-savvy, such as
retail, BFSI, or others which process significant
amounts of information such as Oil & Gas and
Healthcare for example are turning to apply-
ing existing data for business insight. While a
market estimate is difficult to predict right now,
it is clear that large enterprises who have gigan-
tic portions of digital data are actively consider-
ing Big Data analytics.
“THE KEY TREND IN 2012
WILL BE BYO3, WORKSHIFT-
ING AND DESKTOP VIRTU-
ALISATION. INDIAN MARKET
WILL WITNESS INCREASE IN
TABLET ADOPTION, PEOPLE
ADAPTING TO WORKSHIFT-
ING AND EMPLOYEE BASE
DEMANDING WORKSHIFT-
ING CONCEPT.”
KAUSHAL VELURI, DIRECTOR, CHANNELS &
ALLIANCES, INDIA SUBCONTINENT, CITRIX
“MOVING TO ONE WIRE
NETWORK CONVER-
GENCE SHALL BE A
BIG TREND FOR BOTH
STORAGE AND NET-
WORKING SEGMENTS.”
SYED MASROOR, HEAD, TESCO,
NETAPP INDIA
SME CHANNELS
DECEMBER 2011
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6. Another factor that will fuel the need for Big
Data is the ever-increasing growth of digital
data. An IDC-EMC study determined that
India generated nearly 40,000 petabytes of data
in 2010. The report also revealed that over the
next decade (2010 to 2020), digital information
in India will grow twice as fast as the world-
wide rate driven by the roll-out of 3G/BWA
networks, digitization of television networks,
and increased technology adoption among indi-
viduals, SMBs, enterprises and in Government
services like the Unique ID project, Census,
among others.
Cisco is the leader in the networking space
and recently they have come into computing
space with their data centre and cloud comput-
ing offering. B Raghavendran Vice- President
and Head Partner Organization Cisco India
and SAARC, says, “As the network increasingly
becomes the platform for delivering a plethora
of services, we have seen a big jump in Inter-
net traffic. Additionally, the proliferation of
smartphones and tablets, increased traction
in cloud services and virtualization as well as
the growing popularity of IP voice and video
have all resulted in the amount of data traffic
increasing manifold. As the role of the network
transforms, it is becoming central to establish-
ing connections between people, devices, and
information.”
Some of the top trends that Cisco foresees in
Networking in 2012 are as follows:
n Device and content agnosticism: The
network will unify wireless and wired access to
support the proliferation of devices (“bring your
own device”, or BYOD) and ubiquitous mobil-
ity. Virtualization and cloud services will deliver
content whenever they provide a lower cost of
ownership.
n Increased collaboration with customers,
staff, suppliers and other partners will grow,
using video, data, and voice communications
on a variety of devices. There will be increased
emphasis on the ability to quickly and easily
collaborate no matter where people are will
transform business processes. Video will be
the cornerstone of collaboration, for a range of
applications from social networking to smart
connected communities.
n Network security will gain prominence as
the amount of data increases. We will see con-
vergence of elements such as firewalls, content
security, and policy and identity management.
As a result, seamless connections and context-
aware security that recognizes who you are,
what you’re supposed to have access to, what
device you’re on, and where you are globally,
and then provides access accordingly. Addition-
ally, IP based physical safety and security will
also continue to gain prominence.
n As the global population heads towards
7 billion, governments and urban planners
are looking for smarter ways to use available
resources to deliver more with less. Informa-
tion technology is an important enabler of a
more sustainable approach to designing, build-
ing, and operating cities. Smart and connected
communities are no longer just a vision but will
increasingly become a reality.
n Network technology architecture will
connect any device across any combination of
networks, increase cost efficiency by integrat-
ing network security and management, and
improve business processes, including energy
management. Architecture virtualization scales
up the efficiency power of the IT infrastructure
significantly and enhances the performance
of the increasingly complex and consolidated
systems.
n Data Centre consolidation will become
important to ensure optimal utilization of exist-
ing resources and assets. Virtualization will play
a big role in the near future as IT organizations
morph into more and more of a services man-
agement framework.
n The transition from Internet Protocol ver-
sion 4 (IPv4) to IP version 6 (IPv6) will continue
to gain momentum. The use of globally unique
IPv6 addresses simplifies the mechanisms used
for reachability and end-to-end security for
network devices, functionality that is crucial to
the applications and services that are driving the
demand for the addresses.
n 802.11n wireless networks will continue
to see an increase in adoption with the ability
to create a seamless working environment by
combining the mobility of wireless with the per-
formance of wired networks.
Fiscal 2011 was one of the most transforma-
tive years we have seen at Cisco. We prioritized,
simplified, and took action to drive Cisco’s
continued market leadership. We believe the
network will continue to grow in importance
and could become our customers’ most strate-
gic information technology (IT) asset. We will
continue to develop technologies, services, and
software platforms that enable our customers to
leverage the network to solve their greatest busi-
ness challenges.
“AMONG THE VERTICALS
WHERE WE HAVE SEEN AND
WILL SEE GREATER ADOP-
TION OF UC ARE: HOSPITAL-
ITY, SME & HEALTHCARE.”
RAJIV BHALLA, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT
& COUNTRY HEAD, SALES & MARKETING, NEC
INDIA PVT. LTD.
“THE CHALLENGE FOR
STORAGE TECHNOL-
OGY LIES IN KEEPING
PACE WITH INFLATING
CAPACITY REQUIRE-
MENTS WITHOUT
COMPROMISING ON
THE EFFICIENCY.”
KHALID WANI,
SALES DIRECTOR - BRANDED BUSI-
NESS FOR INDIA, MIDDLE EAST, AND
AFRICA, WD
SME CHANNELS
DECEMBER 2011
34
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7. As a graphics platform leader AMD expects
a lot of changing trends in the industry. As per
Raghuram Pattabiraman, Director - Transac-
tion Business, AMD India, Microsoft DirectX
11 is the latest in high-speed, high-fidelity
gaming and computing and features technolo-
gies like Compute Shaders, Direct2D, Multi-
threaded Rendering and Tessellation. DirectX
11 can enable not just more visually stunning
games, but significant performance improve-
ments when it comes to browsing websites and
everyday applications. As users need a graphics
card which gives complete support, perfor-
mance and enhanced image quality for DX11,
this surely will be one trend to watch out for. So
the technology like AMD Eyefinity technology,
AMD HD3D technology, AMD App Accelera-
tion and AMD CrossFireX technology are going
to largely influence the multimedia industry.
Very recently, due to the natural disaster in
Thailand, HDD market had received a strong
hit. Even today, the vendors as well as the
partners are not able to get out of that impact.
Khalid Wani, WD’s sales director - branded
business for India, Middle East, and Africa,
says, “The quantity of digital information is
doubling every two years. The challenge for
storage technology lies in keeping pace with
inflating capacity requirements without com-
promising on the efficiency and cost-effective-
ness of storage peripherals.”
Fortunately, computer storage technology
is evolving with hard disk drives (HDDs) at its
core. Storage vendors are working together to
pre-empt tomorrow’s storage requirements and
standards. New possibilities are being discov-
ered and evaluated everyday to deliver innova-
tive products that will address the tomorrow’s
storage demands.
Industry analysts anticipate that the digital
universe will grow to about 1.8 trillion giga-
bytes of data in 500 quadrillion ‘files’ this year.
Interestingly, only about 25% of this data will
be generic – the rest will consist of redundant
copies! This information is contained in IDC’s
report titled ‘Extracting Value from Chaos,’ on
the exponential growth of the digital universe.
To paint a clearer picture, it states that about
57.5 billion 32 Gb iPads are required to store
1.8 ZB of data. Or, 200 billion high definition
movies, each 120 minutes long, and it would
take one person 47 million years of viewing
around the clock to watch every movie.
The paper goes on to reveal that notwith-
standing a global economic recession in 2010,
the digital universe set a new record by break-
ing the ZB barrier. By 2020, it will be at least 44
times its current size.
So now that electronic data is set to exceed the
2 ZB barrier let’s take a look at the factors that
are driving the demand. Let me point out first,
that ‘shadowing technology’ has contributed
more to the demand than actual user-generated
content.
Digital lifestyles, streaming and personal
content creation for home entertainment, Social
Media, cell phones, security and surveillance
applications, and finally Cloud Computing are
going to push the erstwhile boundaries of data
storage more than ever.
As highlighted earlier, Redundancy of stored
data is responsible for a large portion of the
demand. For instance, anything stored on a
smartphone or tablet is either duplicated or
backed up elsewhere. Enterprises are increas-
ingly embracing the Cloud for storage and ser-
vices. Critical data store on the Cloud is backed
up several times in multiple datacenters across
locations. Clearly, the enterprises’ need for stor-
age and secure backup is only going to increase.
Social platforms such as Twitter or Facebook
“AS USERS NEED
A GRAPHICS CARD
WHICH GIVES COM-
PLETE SUPPORT,
PERFORMANCE AND
ENHANCED IMAGE
QUALITY FOR DX11,
THIS SURELY WILL BE
ONE TREND TO WATCH
OUT FOR.”
RAGHURAM PATTABIRAMAN,
DIRECTOR - TRANSACTION BUSINESS,
AMD INDIA
backup users’ data at least 3 times. Data is cre-
ated around online transactions and purchases,
and continuously updated streams of analysis
are stored, directed and accessed in the vortex.
As capacity and density requirements spiral
upwards, storage companies face barriers
with current technical standards. For SSDs,
as NAND Flash reaches semiconductor limits
for lithographies below 1X nanometers, new
technologies such as vertical NAND or 3D
stackable NAND are striving to extend NAND
Flash technology. Other technologies contend-
ing to succeed NAND are: 3D resistive RAM,
phase change memory (PCM) and spin-transfer
torque magneto-resistive RAM.
Hard drives presently hover at maximum
capacities of 3 terabytes in the 3.5 inch form
factor. Current magnetic drives employ per-
pendicular magnetic recording (PMR). Since
PMR began shipping in 2005, storage densities
have increased as much as eight times from
the previous standard, longitudinal recording.
Thereafter, improvements in Areal Density have
enabled disk capacities to meet demands.
However, PMR is reaching its limit. An
interim answer may be shingle magnetic
recording (SMR) technology. Like shingle tiles
layered on a roof, SMR writes partially overlap-
ping data tracks in a particular direction, radi-
ally to increase a drive’s areal density, getting
more tracks on disk platter surfaces. It provides
a 20 – 50% increase over conventional record-
ing. An ideal fit for selective functions such as
archive data storage, SMR will likely remain as
a technology option in combination with other
enablers on a forward basis.
Another technology under investigation
is that of bit-patterned media (BPM) which
involves pre-defining the size and position of
bits in the recording medium and is expected to
increase storage density on HDDs to 10 terabits
or more per square inch when used in conjunc-
tion with EAMR.
Anticipated to come to market in 5 to 7 years,
BPM records individual bits on lithographed
islands of strongly-coupled magnetic material
which retain each bit’s magnetic charge, thereby
allowing the bits to be far smaller than would
otherwise be possible with continuous media.
Speed-bumps to BPM’s implementation are sig-
nificant cost and fabrication concerns.
Finally...
Overall, there will be evolution in all technology
space but the enteprise applciations will largely
revolve arround cloud computing, virtualiza-
tion and mobility. Tablets will play a major role
in enterprise and cosnumers life.
SME CHANNELS
DECEMBER 2011
36
COVER STORY TECHNOLOGY TRENDS 2012
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