Venyu Blog

My parents gave us a palm-size HD camcorder for Christmas… I realize how dorky I must look working in IT and not owning a camcorder before this one. Don’t judge! We take a lot of still pictures of the kids (prior to Christmas). This gift thankfully came with a microSD card – 16GB worth of storage.

I’m sure you remember the days when a 512MB compact flash card was $200.00+ and here I hold this rediculously tiny, wonder of data storage. While examining it, I felt a sneeze welling up and was sure I was going to blow it clear across the room. This itty-bitty, fragile chip holds 8 hours of HD footage (720p for you A/V aficianados out there). Carefully loading the chip into the camera, I was struck by how far storage and data has come.

If you take a second to consider the implications of this amount of storage on a chip no larger than your pinky nail… what is 16GB to your business? I know for a lot of businesses, their entire accounting package could fit on a microSD. A highly-critical SQL table could be dumped onto that. In the back of my mind, it conjurs up images of MI-5 or James Bond – the top secret plans stored on a chip tucked in a matchbook for smuggling into Finland… or something like that (*queue the laughter*).

The dichotomy (or irony) of form vs function when it comes to storage can be mind-boggling. I believe the lesson here is to be mindful of the ever increasing tendency to store your critical data on storage where form does not follow function. The accounting software needs to be backed up professionally, those highly-critical SQL databases need to be protected. Businesses must align the criticality and value of their data with a backup and protection strategy that provides the business assurance that their data will be there when they need it.

I venture to argue that form does not truly follow function when it comes to our little HD camera’s microSD card. It has the ability to store 8-hours of memories of my girls growing up — and it could literally all be blown away.