In the Cloud or Near Ourselves: The Future of Consumer Storage

Technological improvements such as virtualization, deduplication and advances in compression technology, as well as improvements in content security have reduced the costs while improving performance levels and trust in today's data centers. This, in addition to the growth in thin client devices such as smart phones and tablet computers, has led to increased use of digital storage in the cloud. At the same time the pending saturation of many internet and mobile networks, non-scaling content distribution networks, increasing content resolution and quantity and slow or intermittent internet connectivity for many users hinders the more widespread adoption of cloud based content. This talk will explore developments and drivers for both personal and Internet cloud storage and local storage in today's changing storage hierarchy and make projections on changes expected in the future enabled by more or less ubiquitous content and social interaction and ever smarter consumer and computer products.