Originating Author: David Vellante
According to PricewaterhouseCooper's most recent MoneyTree report, interest in green technology is smoking hot, up 80% sequentially in the third quarter of 2007, capturing more than $840M in venture investment for the period. A clean tech company (GreatPoint Energy of Cambridge, MA which converts coal and biomass into natural gas)inked one of only two deals worth $100M or more in the quarter. The MoneyTree report also indicates that information technology remains the sector capturing the most investment, attracting $3.7B in the quarter.
What does this have to do with storage? It seems plausible that among portfolio companies of VC's, the intersection of clean tech and IT will lead to investments in data center technologies that are greener, including those within the storage infrastructure domain. While complementary technologies such as storage virtualization, thin provisioning and data deduplication --which are being retrofitted into existing product sets-- will get a lot of attention, alternative storage technologies may very well reemerge in this equation.
Specifically, two technologies in the storage heirarchy bear watching, tape and solid state disk. Tape is the greenest of all storage technologies. By its continued existence and persistence, it appears an excellent candidate for innovation, which has been lacking in recent years. Tape remains a multi-billion-dollar market, and, with most of the world's information residing on tier 3 storage, tape, both as a standalone technology and in the form of hybrid disk/tape approaches, could attract investment. Solid state disk (SSD) is another green(er) technology that could make a comeback. As disk aerial density improvements slowly flatten, semiconductor-based alternatives could become more attractive and challenge disk for TB consumption as green storage heats up.
Other areas that bear watching include storage services, distributed file systems and liquid cooling of storage circuitry. Storage services are a natural for reducing power consumption as outsourcing storage will immediately lower the power bill. Perhaps as interesting is distributed file systems like the Google File System that spread data everywhere, presume component failure and run on mega-data-center infrastructure. This type of approach strips out the need for complex controllers and boils the power problem down to the disk device itself, which can then be attacked specifically. Finally liquid cooling of storage control circuitry will come indirectly from processor innovation, not likely from storage suppliers. However it will seep into the marketplace, albeit at a premium price.
Action Item: New invention and efforts to build companies will probably coalesce around green storage. Vendors wanting to participate and not get left out in the cold must shift the emphasis of green from marketing to more substantive research, invention and development.
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