Winning Storage Technologies Through 2015 - Invest Wisely

IDC: Advances in digital storage technologies remain critically important to meet the future needs of an increasingly digital society. Successful IT and consumer-based digital device designs will place greater demands on digital storage to achieve further capacity increases at lower prices – with rising expectations for greater robustness, security, and reliability. This surge in storage requirements has given rise to new storage technologies looking to challenge the long-standing technologies used in a multitude of today's applications. The criteria for a given storage technology's success will vary with each application, and no one storage technology can possibly meet all storage application requirements. Despite challenges from competing storage technologies, IDC expects hard disk drives (HDDs) will continue to lead in density and price through 2015.

Reports of the HDD's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Mapping out technology and usage roadmaps through 2015 reveals clear strengths for some storage technologies and potential battle grounds between others. Winning storage technologies will offer the best balance of all requirements put forth by the computing device and its user in terms of cost, capacity, performance, environmental friendliness, and most importantly, ease of use.

Storage Technology Futures to 2015: Flash, Disk Drive, Holographic, and New Technology Roadmaps and Applications Revealed Publ 20060710