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Now that we’re one month into 2014, we’ve had a chance to see many of the storage industry’s most prominent experts discuss their trends and predictions for the next 12 months. And, while we agree with many of the projections that experts including Tom Coughlin and Charles McLellan have posted in recent weeks, we have some additional predictions for the technologies and trends that will shape the storage industry this year.

• The use of flash-based cache becomes standard practice for increasing efficiency in enterprise storage. Flash-based caching is a common use case today using solid state drives (SSDs). In 2014, Toshiba expects that it will continue to be a low-cost way to improve both read and write performance of hard disk drive (HDD) storage. Tiering, which uses SSDs as fast primary data storage, may only be cost-justified for specific applications.
• 2Gb/s SAS interfaces in new industry standard servers and storage controllers will lead to increased demand for faster enterprise solid state drives (eSSDs). Faster host interfaces will enable faster SSD performance, in some cases up to a saturation of the SAS link. In 2013, Toshiba was first to market with a 12Gb/s eSSD, the PX series. This year, we expect the SAS interfaces to continue to grow and dominate the enterprise market.
• Reductions in energy consumption will continue to be a key focus for both public and private based cloud data centers. Reducing carbon footprints and energy and cooling costs will continue to be a key Opex focus for data center managers. Many companies are architecting new servers and storage designed for lower power usage. SSDs and HDDs will help address these needs by increasing capacity per unit so that fewer devices can be used to store more data.
• Scale-out IT Service Provider companies will continue to demand more capacity per spindle to help control operating efficiencies. 
  Data growth in the digital universe will continue to accelerate, forcing data centers to manage data growth aggressively and improve operational efficiencies at every opportunity. Data center services companies must control costs and provide scale-out efficiencies to deliver cost savings to their IT customers, while social media companies must control costs and provide value to advertisers and end users through the use of analytics. Additionally, government-scale smart community service providers must deliver value to agencies and citizens through the use of analytics to improve the safety and well-being of entire communities.
  

We’re looking forward to another great year in the storage industry, and we hope that you’ll continue to share your thoughts on trends, storage predictions and technology advancements with us online and on social media (@ToshibaStorage).