It was a busy week in the world of storage. From the looming changes in compute storage thanks to the rising popularity of the Internet of Things, to the NSA secretly taking, and storing, your personal data  — a busy week indeed. The Internet of Things is going to produce yottabytes of new data, changing the way data centers are architected, especially at the storage level.  This consumer-happy movement is proving an enticing opportunity for government and corporate entities.  As a result,  the big players and fresh-faced startups are scrambling to position solutions and services for the cloud-driven storage world of the future.  It’s a lot like watching the crowd at the opening of WalMart’s doors on Black Friday.

What data exactly is being collected and stored? Who has access to it? Do I even know that my personal data is being collected? The mounting questions around personal data security is growing exponentially larger with each passing day. Accessing the enterprise might be the first question, but storage is the bigger question.

Here is a round-up of the storage news for this week:

How Internet of Things & Transition in Compute Landscape Affect Storage

The Internet of Things is moving the Internet from people to things. The technology world is experiencing and influencing massive market shifts in some key industries, such as retail and financial services.  Currently there is somewhere between 8 to 10 billion connected devices, and that number is going to double in the next 3-5 years. That’s 16 to 20 billion connected devices, from your toaster to your toilet. The looming transition in compute storage is going to be huge.

Storage is the Link Between Collecting, Analyzing + Acting On Big Data

We have a long way to go before Big Data is ubiquitous in the enterprise, and one thing that Big Data is going to need both today and in the future is a place to store it all…and store it smarter. 2012 storage revenue came in at $1.83 billion. That number jumps to a projected $7.28 billion in 2017. The only Big Data market with a higher grossing revenue in both 2012 and the 2017-projection is Compute. Storage is the link between collecting all of that data, and analyzing and being able to act on it. There will be momentous breakthroughs because we’re able to understand the data around critical issues. Storage, is the Superman in that narrative.

Top Trends Driving Converged Infrastructure Adoption + Evolution

Spending on converged infrastructure is expected to exceed $17 billion by 2016, so it’s no wonder top vendors are pouring resources into expanding their product portfolios around this unified technology. This is a Q&A with NetApp’s Adam Fore, Director of Virtualization and Cloud Solutions Marketing. Fore speaks on customer buying patterns that are driving the adoption of converged infrastructure, the areas NetApp sees the most traction, and the ways in which he sees this space evolving.

Without Storage, Our Data Revolution Falls Flat on Its Face

In seven years, both Cisco (2011 report) and SAP (2013 report) estimate that there will be 50 billion ‘things’ connected to the Internet. That means that in 2020 there will be 3-6.5 devices for every man, woman, and child on this planet. Holy cow. Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication is going to be just as important as human-to-human communication in the next seven years and without storage, that Data Revolution never takes off. All of those reports, sensor readings, information and analytics make up Big Data and that Big Data has to be stored somewhere so that it can be analyzed. Storage is the link between collecting and analyzing data.

What’s HP’s Strategy for Flash + 3PAR? Scale Up vs. Scale Out

HP Discover 2013 starts next week, and a storage question we’re all going to want to hear addressed is Hewlett-Packard’s current position with 3PAR, a key acquisition from a couple years back, and 3PAR’s role in HP’s goals to update its Flash-based storage technology. We’re hoping the company will pull back the curtain at HP Discover to reveal its plan for updating its storage business. A battle is brewing that is going to pit matured stacks against new stacks in the data center. Wikibon’s chief analyst Dave Vellante expects HP to leverage its existing architecture.  It’s modern enough they can adapt for flash without penalty — and in Vellante’s words, “HP has to shrink to grow.”

HP, Dell Angle for the Top Spot In Converged Storage : It’s a Race

Converged storage is one of the three components of the emerging vision of converged infrastructure, evolving the data center alongside servers and networks. It’s quite the buzz word in the Big Data hype cycle right now. Hewlett-Packard is one of those companies investing resources into converged storage. At its most recent earnings call, HP emphasized that demand for its converged storage solutions increased by 48 percent from last year to $349 million. Within that, sales of 3PAR equipment soared by 82 percent.

Dell is another pushing storage updates towards a converged infrastructure vision. The company recently announced an upgrade to its Dell Compellent Storage Center operating system (OS), and says that its optimized for a new all-flash array, a new SATA dense storage array and an upgrade to its Fluid File System.

Horses, Buggies and SSDs – Outlining Storage Market’s Transition Period

The storage sector is particularly complicated, considering its central role in today’s data management cycle. Fortunately for us, the storage industry has a lot in common with the horse and buggy era, a useful way to simplify some of the more complex concepts. The sweet spot? Higher volumes + lower prices + improved reliability = ideal product. Customers were not only appreciative of the new technology, but it transformed from a want to a need. And the image? #winning

The NSA is Not Only Spying on You, It’s Storing Your Data, Too

First this week, we learned the NSA was secretly tapping phone call metadata from Verizon. Shortly thereafter we learned about the NSA’s PRISM project, a warrantless government surveillance program with alleged participants: Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Dropbox. PRISM is a system that gives the NSA and the FBI direct access to a vast number of online commercial services, that is capable of “extracting audio, video, photos, emails documents and connection logs” which allow investigators to build up a picture of an individual’s movements and contacts over time. Build up means store. The NSA is bulking up storage. Big Brother not only is listening, but now he’s remembering.

Takeaways

So there you have it. The week that was in storage. Here are three on-going storage themes to remember: (1) the Internet of Things is evolving storage requirements rapidly, (2) data security for personal data is becoming a hotbed of debate, (3) cloud storage is starting to eat on-premise storage slowly but surely.