A great post from the guys at 3Leaf about consumer network attached storage. I agree 100% with Sean and Scott that a consumer shouldn't have to buy, build, or kludge their way into a decent quality storage environment for the home, especially as demands for consumer storage increase as devices proliferate. This Christmas was the Christmas of the digital cameras. Over the next year many people will be amassing gigabytes upon gigabytes of photos. Most will burn them to CD and, as a result be forgotten like so many photo albums. Next Christmas may be the Christmas of digital video cameras as video editing becomes a standard feature on most computers and prices for digital video cameras fall. I don't need to mention MP3's. DVR's, however, are just breaking out of their shell onto the PC with the MediaCenter PC and other similar devices that bring Tivo functionality to the desktop or laptop. All of this means an exponential increase in storage demand by consumers. Companies like Network Appliance, HP, and IBM should launch consumer product lines targeting the 500GB to 1TB range for $500 to $1,000 that simply plug into a home network and allow a consumer to manage the array via a web browser.

posted: 12:52:51 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Now that we are in the age of wireless what does it mean for your data? Not much, I'm afraid. Your data is still locked away in a database, on a disk, or, worse yet, a tape somewhere. Over the next few weeks I'll be writing a series of stories on data mobility. The first story will define and frame the problem. The second story will survey what is possible today. Finally, the third story will define a clear vision for the future of data mobility.

This is a problem that I have been interested in for years from simply changing machines every couple of years to using multiple machines to being a power user on the road. I also have a professional interest in the problem in that I've worked on a number of projects where data mobility was at the core of what we needed to get accomplished on very large scales. I want to share lessons I've learned, recommendations from others, and define a clear vision for the future.

posted: 1:34:31 AM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()