Last week was a short week for Americans, so we held off the ‘This week in storage’ until Monday so you can get caught up. We hope that you had a great Fourth of July and there were no fireworks accidents. Last week’s storage news consisted of a strong focus on the cloud from Xbox, NetApp, Netflix, Hadoop and Boxee.

Trends are starting to emerge in cloud storage. The demand from the enterprise along with the growing question of “what does this mean to my data” are two big ones. Who owns what is a track that is going to be played over and over again. Think Gagnam Style times infinity.

Here is a round-up of the storage news for the week of July 1st:

Xbox Music + The Future of the Consumer Cloud

 
The era of cloud computing and more importantly cloud storage has stormed upon us with reverence and a “HEY I’M HERE, LETS PARTY!” passion. We are seeing the ubiquity of the cloud storage model of data storage in a whole host of consumer cloud services. From the Amazon Kindle to Xbox, the cloud is here and here to stay. First there was Xbox’s subscriber model with their Xbox LIVE, allowing a customer to save an in-progress game to the cloud. Then last October it announced Xbox Music which competes with the like of Pandora and Spotify giving users direct access to the service through the web.

The Future of Flash For Storage Solutions

 
There is a growing trend of adapters that bridge the chasm between servers by allowing direct-attached storage, typically unable to be shared between servers, to connect embedded SSDs with SAN. Wikibon’s Stu Miniman says that flash will, within the next three to four years, negate demand for high-speed disk-based systems. The recently launched QLogic FabricCache is well positioned for the flash storage revolution.

NetApp, Internet of Things + Consumer Cloud : Interview with Val Bercovici

 
NetApp is the last pure play “storage company” standing. Storage as we’ve known it for the past twenty years is over. When it comes to Big Data and cloud computing there isn’t a slam-dunk winner right now. In today’s Profile Series we hear from Val Bercovici, Senior Director, Office of the CTO of NetApp. The interview focused on three key areas: enterprise cloud and the enterprise + consumer cloud. Bercovici believes that consumers will continue to be prioritize convenience features over security and that multi-tenant security is going to be a sticking point.

Netflix Cloud Protocols Calling ‘All Aboard’

 
In the ever-faster moving world of data management, we have seen the adoption and seemingly insensitive abandonment of data storage methods and products, always in favor of the next new standard. Netflix has sizable skin in the cloud storage game, I mean after all, there product is built around it.

Interestingly enough, cloud adoption around its protocol is an effort Netflix is taking as far as to try to standardize. In providing so much assistance to anyone with the desire to peruse their code, Netflix is, to borrow from the second metaphor, trying (and expertly so, it would seem) to be the company to set the track width standard. By laying out a publicly available roadmap, it’s hard to see how other companies don’t adopt much of the Netflix cloud protocols.

Hadoop: The Next Generation In Data Management

 
Hadoop, while growing is not the standard…yet. Hadoop already has achieved a broad acceptance, but there still remains the opportunity for a more vast global dissemination. That dissemination lies squarely in the court of private companies that have adopted a proprietary model that overlays the open source programming.

Is Free Storage Really Free?

 
Much has been written about “free” storage. We’ve covered quite the bevy of it too. Heck, one could acquire as much as 112 GB of “free” storage by simply registering on one of the many storage sites. But what does “free” storage of data + services, whether Dropbox or Instagram really mean to you the end-user? Here is something to consider: How will that company, who’s free app you just downloaded, make use of your data and exactly how they will do it? What are you agreeing to, by using a service such as Facebook, Instagram, Words With Friends, etc? Are free apps and free storage on those apps really free?

Does This Boxee Make Me Look Frustrated???

 
Samsung acquired the New York-based start-up Boxee for $30M and subsequently shut its doors. Boxee began as a media software company and eventually as a device maker through its partnership with D-Link on the Boxee Box set-top box. After a failed “pivot” away from providing open-source software for desktops and TVs, Boxee’s focus switched to being acquired. Boxee’s full staff is being consumed by Samsung, and we can expect to see Boxee’s software on Samsung’s TVs in an attempt to differentiate in the crowded TV set space.