Revenue for Media/Entertainment Storage Systems Up 1.7X From 2011 to 2016

The seventh annual report from Coughlin Associates on digital storage in media and entertainment, 2011 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report ($7,000), provides 159 pages of analysis of the role of digital storage in all aspects of professional media and entertainment. Projections of digital storage demand for content capture, post production, content distribution and content archiving are provided in 55 tables and 78 figures out to 2016.  

Highlights from the report:

• Digital storage requirements are exploding due to use of higher resolution and stereoscopic content in the media and entertainment industry.
• Active archiving will drive increased use of HDD storage for archiving applications supplementing tape for long term archives.
• Flash memory will find wider use in cameras and content distribution.
• Between 2011 and 2016 we expect the media and entertainment industry will see about a 7.7X increase in the required digital storage capacity and about a 5.6X growth in storage capacity shipments per year (from 11,248 PB to 62,736 PB).
• Total revenue for media and entertainment storage systems will increase about 1.7X from 2011 through 2016 ($3.8 B to $6.4 B).
• About 57% of the total storage capacity will be used for content archiving and preservation in 2011. We believe that this will increase to 60% of total capacity by 2016 due to more efficient and cost effective conversion services, lower overall storage costs and a greater ROI on long tail content.
• In 2011 we estimate that about 43.6% of the total storage media shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was tape with about 39.1% HDD, 17.1% optical and 0.2% flash memory (mostly in digital cameras and some media distribution servers).
• By 2016 tape units will decline to 39.1%, HDDs increase to 60%, optical decline to 0.6% and flash increasing in percentage to 0.3%.
• Total revenue for storage media and devices will increase about 1.6X from 2011 through 2016 ($485 M to $760 M).
• The single biggest application (by storage capacity) for digital storage in the next several years as well as one of the most challenging is the digital conversion of film, video tape and other analog formats.
• Over 61 Exabytes of digital storage will be used for digital archiving and content conversion and preservation by 2015.
• Content distribution systems will drive the growth of network and direct attached/local storage in the projection period.
• Digital cinema is experiencing considerable growth, driven by the popularity of 3D content.
• There is a pressing need to develop policies and procedures for format conversion to combat format obsolescence.
• Several petabytes of storage may be required for a complete stereoscopic digital movie production at 4K resolution and there is some production work as high as 8K.
• Non-linear editing requires high performance storage devices. Over the forecast period lower network storage costs and higher performing low cost storage networks will result in faster growth of network storage than direct attached and local.
• ATA HDD arrays are becoming the dominant mode for readily retrievable fixed content storage.

  The report includes results from a late 2010 survey of mostly SMPTE
  members on their digital storage needs in these target segments
  (comparing the results to a similar 2009 survey). These surveys were
  used to refine the current report analysis from previous editions. The
  report benefited from input from experts in the industry which, along
  with economic analysis and industry publications and announcements, was
  used to create the data including in the report.

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