I just read my colleague’s blog, “My Cloud, Your Cloud, Everyone’s Cloud”, and could not help but to think about how our lives are so similar. I too follow a regiment of checking my smartphone to start my day, and my job also involves cloud data center companies. As the lead sales person for Tier 2 data center companies, I meet and visit various companies around Silicon Valley – from ride sharing companies to storage/system makers, many of which are well known names. Though the size of their cloud is not at the same scale as Tier 1 cloud companies, the combined cloud size of Tier 2 companies is steadily growing. In 2019, Tier 2 cloud companies consumed approximately 5%* of all nearline exabytes shipped according to TRENDFOCUS, Inc.
There are other noticeable differences between Tier 1 and Tier 2 data center customers. Unlike T1 cloud companies, Tier 2 data center customers buy a wider variety of nearline HDDs – ranging from lower capacity 2TB MG04 Enterprise Capacity HDD to our highest 16TB MG08 Enterprise Capacity HDD, and in unit terms, =<10TB is greater than the >10TB nearline HDD volumes. In addition, Tier 2 companies are generally slower in transitioning to next-generation, higher-capacity nearline designs than their Tier 1 counterparts. As such, our most popular capacity enterprise class HDDs in 2019 were 8TB and 10TB MG06 Enterpries Capacity HDD series, and this trend is expected to continue for at least several more quarters.
Another big difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 are the number of companies for each tier. Tier 1 players only consists of about half dozen U.S. and China-based companies. On the other hand, the Tier 2 customer list is so large, it is nearly impossible to count. Additionally, the customer base is very diverse and located all over the world. For me, this is one of the most exciting factors of my job, as I get the opportunity to meet all sorts of different types of companies.
Can you imagine going a day without being connected? I know I cannot. I realize now how much my life revolves around the cloud, and that I, along with most others, take it all for granted. And when I take a step back, I see that I actually play a role in keeping the world connected and making the cloud available for everyone. That brings me joy and makes me proud to be a part of the Toshiba HDD team. I am driven to extend our Tier 2 presence, so that the cloud and the connected world can continue to grow for I now know how much my world revolves around the cloud.
*TRENDFOCUS, Inc. subscriber data reports are published quarterly.
Toshiba defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 230 = 1,073,741,824 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system, such as Microsoft Operating System and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.