As digital entertainment streams into consumers' lives, they are amassing valuable troves of stored data. A recent survey conducted by KRC Research and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies found that U.S. adults have an average of $1,135 worth of entertainment stored on devices such as laptops/PCs, MP3 players, DVRs, mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras or portable movie players, and that their appetite for more storage is growing as our lives become more mobile. In particular, "Generation Y" (18-24 years) consumers, a group known for their technology savvy, have an even higher average of $2,199 worth of entertainment stored on devices. The survey results also point to a larger belief within the hard drive industry: As the cost of digital storage becomes less than 10 percent of the content value, it is affordable enough for that content to be permanently retained -- increasing the pervasiveness of hard disk drives. Hitachi believes high-capacity hard drives -- unlike any other form of portable storage today -- have now achieved that level of affordability for consumers.
We know artificial intelligence consumes huge amounts of energy. The power grid is now a major concern in enterprise technology strategy, and it's reshaping decisions that used to belong entirely to the CIO. For three decades, capacity planning meant negotiating with a cloud provider or a colocation vendor. Today it increasingly means understanding utility interconnection queues, local zoning battles, and the willingness of hyperscale operators to build faster than the grid can comfortably absorb. New research from Synergy Research Group puts deep market data behind a trend every large enterprise buyer has already felt: the constraints are real, but the AI infrastructure build-out is not slowing down. Electric Power Grid Market Development Synergy's tracking shows that total U.S. data center capacity is on pace to double within the next three years, even as power availability and local opposition create genuine friction for new projects. It's a striking signal that demand ...