The Japanese giant Fujifilm has reported they aim to increase their data tape production by five times through 2028. Fujifilm raises data tape production in part due to an anticipated rise in archiving storage demand, following on the news from chipmaker SK Hynix that it expects the current memory shortage to continue until 2030.
Magnetic tape seems in many ways like it would be an overcome and outdated medium. Certainly a few years ago, the future saw anticipated to be in the Cloud and physical mediums were on their way out.
Tape has several advantages, however. Magnetic tape can store large volumes of data over long periods at low cost. Tape can also be physically isolated from networks, making it more attractive from a security point of view.
Moreover, the major advantage that tape is exploiting right now is the so-called memory crisis. With AI and data center related demand spiking and showing no sign of slowing down despite economic questions around the growth’s sustainability. With manufacturers of digital memory having their production capacity sold out years in advance, manufacturers for other storage mediums smell an opportunity to claim parts of the market.
Archiving, data and AI
AI, as has been discussed endlessly, is a relentlessly data-driven field. From training data sets for the AI to consume to internal data it can use to inform company-specific tasks and uses, the AI tools generally only have as much utility as your organization has data to feed them.
This circles back to archives and the need for archiving – long-term retention of data is fundamentally speaking a question of archiving, both in terms of costs (archives are designed to be cheaper bulk storage than other alternatives) but also in discoverability and structure. Unstructured data is, after all, not overly useful for tools to parse.
The memory shortage is likely to stay with us for the foreseeable future while the current AI boom lasts, leaving opportunities for those on the edges providing systems and services adjacent to the growing field.
Your Data in Your hands – With TECH-ARROW
by Matúš Koronthály
Image generated by Canva
