Economic Modeling of Long-Term Storage

Understanding economics of long-term preservation is necessary because of tremendous data growth, storage density growth slow down, uncertainty in financial investment market conditions, and increasing need for data preservation. Current business models rely on continuous storage density growth and hence cost-per-byte decline. Given the storage density growth slow down, there is a need to reconsider using disks for long-term preservation. Despite their low upfront cost, disks are expensive in long-term because of their high operational costs. It's time we look for alternative technologies which are more cost-effective than disk in long-term.