Storage: Year in Review 2010

Storage also got a lot more press in 2010 as the business world accepted the "data explosion" was in full swing and never was a safer, securer place to store all your data needed more.

Back in May, EMC commissioned its annual Digital Universe study, undertaken by analyst firm IDC. It claimed digital information had reached a whopping 0.8 Zettabytes one Zettabyte equals a trillion gigabytes over the previous 12 months and the number was set to hit 35 Zettabytes by 2020.

In May, an IBM study then showed CEOs from the UK and Ireland citied the data explosion as the top factor likely to impact their businesses.

A number of storage companies used the data explosion as a way to push their scalable products and virtual, scalable cloud computing received a boost thanks to the nature of growing data partly put down in the EMC/IDC report to the growth in online media, such as photos and music, and mobile data.

This trend is set to continue into 2011 but 2010 was truly a year where the data explosion gained notoriety.

The year of the SSD?

The start of the year saw yet another report claiming 2010 would be the year SSDs would make their mark. IDC claimed the rise of 14 per cent in sales during 2009 to 11 million shipped units was set to continue at an even faster pace in 2010.

However, the major stalling point for SSD has always been price per gigabyte and this has still yet to drop significantly enough to entice the market to buy.

Progress has been made though, with Intel and Micron doubling the capacity of its NAND flash to 8GB and reducing the size to just 25nm. The companies first announced the advancement in February and then confirmed in August the product would be released by the end of the year.

However, to the disappointment of SSD enthusiasts, this was been delayed and the product is not expected until 2011.

So, whilst 2010 hasn't been the year it promised to be for SSDs, it looks likely 2011 will take the crown.