Are you an Online Data Storage (ODS) rogue? Do you realize whoever controls the data (the cloud) controls the information? Google has just announced a new service to increase your storage amounts online, more comments on Techmeme.

Considering that storage is inexpensive, almost commodity like, the following prices are extremely high:

“When you reach the limit of free storage (i.e., 1GB for Picasa Web Albums, 2.8GB for Gmail), consider this your overflow solution. Plans start at $20/year for 6GB (yes, $5 cheaper than before), with larger plans ranging up to 250GB. If only testing everything were this easy.”

Why are they high? Because I think future Online Data Storage companies will Pay You to Upload Data, whoever owns the information, and can index it, has information to re-use the content for marketing. I’m not the only person who thinks this is not a wise buy.

I hope my friends at Hitachi, Seagate, and other online data storage companies are watching.

I just learned from a employee at HDS that my former CEO, who I enjoyed working for has moved on from Hitachi Data Systems to HP Storage. In my three years working at Hitachi, Dave always had an open door policy, and was open minded to new ideas, espcially from youngins’ like myself.

I had several meeting with Dave around social media, online video, and online data storage, in fact, he even relied on me to help assemble a dinner where he was able to meet the Web 2.0 generation, as well as some players in the Online Data Storage market.

This article from CRN sheds a little light to why this change may have happened:

“Echoing rumors around the storage industry, Cerniglia said the change in executives could be the sign of a possible sale of HDS by parent company Hitachi in Japan to either HP, which has a long-term OEM agreement to sell HDS arrays, or to Sun, which is a long-term reseller of HDS arrays. “

I’m wishing Dave success in his new role, and looking to hear what happens next to HP Storage and Hitachi Data Systems.

Online Data storage is a commodity.

Yahoo announced unlimited storage for yahoo mail (which I use). That’s great, because I’m in the upper 90% of my capacity. I don’t delete mail, as I like it for archival purposes and to search for historical context.

Disks are cheap, the web is a utility, and users put their data all over the web. I’ve been following this market for some time now and have come to the realization that soon vendors will be begging (or paying) users to upload data to their sites. There’s an interesting timeline from the Unofficial Google watch blog about the timeline of Yahoo mail and Gmail.

There’s some inherent challenges with having your data all over the web; 1) Privacy, 2) Identity, 3) Security, 4) Backup are just a few issues that require consideration.

So what’s next? What really matters? With Unlimited Data Storage barely being a feature to tout the next marketing campaign from Gmail or Yahoo mail should be one on secured data, privacy, and backups.

There’s discussions that Microsoft may be entering the Online Data Storage space. I believe that ODS can be a feature, a feature that will pay users to upload data.

I’ve updated the list of Enterprise players that are offering Online Data Storage.

I’ve been following the online data storage market very carefully, (having worked at a data storage company for 3 years)

The new model of web companies is to minimize technical infrastructure, such as using webservices like a utility like power or water.

Tim O’Reilly is asking for numbers from clients, a case study to show how the web is an infrastructure. The benefits? pay as you go, no need for a sys admin or HW purchase, no upgrading, and hopefully no data loss. Of course, the real risk is worrying about where your corporate data is, Jeff Nolan notes some issues with continuity with databases and storage.

Amazon is not alone, I’ve a list of quite a few enterprise IT vendors that are also entering the online data storage industry, so please don’t forget those companies (who already have a large install base)

The big picture for Online Data storage is the opportunity for effective marketing, (there are other opportunites and disruptions to think about as well). When user data is stored on the cloud, the opportunity to understand, organize, and connect information is at hand. This is why I have the theory that Amazon S3 will eventually pay users (or other online data storage users) to upload data.

Because of my background working at a large Data Storage company and being a web guy, I’m watching how this market plays out. It’s assumed that this market is aimed at the consumer, small business. I predict it will move upstream to mid sized businesses, and then ‘lower value’ data may be a strategic play for enterprise customers.

The players:

EMC: Last week EMC has hinted confirmed at going towards Online Data Storage (by 2007). Update Sept 2007: EMC has acquired Mozy, online data storage backup.

Dell: The day I was able to video Michael Dell I learned that Dell is headed towards online backup and recovery

Microsoft
It’s now rumored from LiveSide that Microsoft is entering the online data storage space, more discussions on Techmeme.

Seagate: Seagate has eVault.

Amazon: We all already know about Amazon’s S3. They scored some data intensive clients such as SecondLife.

Ebay/PayPalThat makes another eCommerce company is in the market too.

Watching: I’m waiting to hear what Hitachi, Sun, IBM, and NetApp are going to respond, if at all.

Extra special Watching: Google’s expected to unleash it’s secret storage program Platypus. There’s lots of rumors floating around wondering what those massive secret data centers are going to do. One thing for sure is they need more power.

Many smaller players: There’s quite a few smaller companies that offer online data storage, I started a partial list here, but I doubt I’m going to keep it update. This could easily be in the hundreds and maybe thousands by end of year. Many companies will offer online data storage as a side offer. (like free checking)

I wrote an prediction that I believe that Online Data Storage companies will pay users to upload data, there was some disagreements with what I wrote, but I think my prediction is already starting to happen as Google is going to start paying people who upload video. That’s a start, and with the online office suite they’re building, it could extend to other content and media.

Check out this interesting backup review site, or read all my posts tagged “data storage”.

Update: I also find this all very interesting in light of Cisco’s acquisition of Five Across a SF Social Networking suite that has forums, blogs, and media sharing. If I were to extend this pattern to other websites maybe some big storage company should consider buying or investing in online media companies that have images, video, or other features.

Above: Media and Data was being created at the 24X7 BlogHaus for over 120 hours straight; bloggers, photographers, podcasters, and video bloggers create, publish, share, and store.

I’ve learned a few things about Data Storage by osmosis over the last 3 years as I came from a Data Storage company. I’ve had many an interesting conversations with folks on how much data is being created by individuals using regular consumer tools. The BlogHaus, sponsored by Seagate only accelerated this in this rare event.

It’s only one day after the event ending, so I’m sure more media will be created and put online as well as saved on to personal local drives in laptops, desktops, and external hard drives.

Images
I myself took 248 photos and uploaded to Flickr
-The original size is 3.8 MB
-It’s also saved on my local HD, and will eventually go to my external HD as backup.
-The Large size is 605.04 KB
-The Medium is 169 KB
-Small is 18.21 KB
-Thumbnail is a mere 3.76 KB
=4.5 MB per average photo loaded to flickr
=Note: the data is replicated on my local and then again to my external drive

That’s over 1 gig of data, I created just using pictures. Do note that only about 1/3rd of my photos even make it to flickr. I save them all. I have at least 4 gigs of data from a few days of this event.
A quick search on flickr indicates there are over 660 photos tagged bloghaus.

Video
Even in this video I shot, you can see there are 5 video bloggers and everyone was filming and creating data. That’s quite a few MBs too. I also blogged, alot. even more data. This podtech video is 60mb, without a doubt the raw versions are backup and replicated on various servers.

Uber producers
Thomas Hawk was on a goal to shoot over 1000 photos, he shoots in raw and is creating tons of data with every click. I sent him an email, I want to know how much he created.

Update Jan 18th: I’ve since learned that Gear Live has created and uploaded quite a bit of content from the Bloghaus, we’re finding out exactly how much it was, but it was at least 100 videos.

That’s just 3 creators of 600 attendees
That’s just two of us, granted we’re both big creators, but there’s quite a great deal of data from the other 600+ creators that attended. There were so many video bloggers, cameras, bloggers.

Data on Local, Uploaded to Cloud, Archived, and in External Drives
Since I share much of my data online, it gets replicated on the production and archive servers. Later I’ll move my data from my local drive to my backup external drive at home. With a rough estimate, I probably created 16 gigs of data when you add up all the web servers, replication, and external drives. If you multiply that 16 GB times the number of guests (600+) that’s a few Terabytes

The Future
This is just the start, with more mobile devices having features that let you capture images and video, more data will be created. The DSLR industry has really taken hold, amateur photography is increasing at a phenomenal rate. Video bloggers are creating more and more content (have you seen how many shows are on YouTube now?)

How much Data did you create at CES or Bloghaus?
In the comments, tell us how many pictures you took, blog posts, or size of video.

As you know, I’m watching the Online Data Storage story. I came from a traditional Data Storage company and I’ve strong interest in the web. It’s well known Dell already offers Data Storage servers at the low end of the market with re branded EMC products. Now Dell is also getting into the Online Data Storage industry:

“Dell Chairman Michael Dell used his 2007 Consumer Electronics Show keynote to show off what may be the PC giant’s biggest services gambit yet: an online backup service called Dell DataSafe that will be available later this year.

The new password-protected service, unveiled Tuesday before hundreds of CES showgoers, allows users to easily back up data online and migrate it to a new laptop or desktop PC. Pricing for the new service wasn’t available.”

Remember how I said ODS is going to be like ‘free checking’? Well it’s happening. Folks still disagree with my theory that Online Data Storage Companies will pay you to upload data.