Disruptive Innovation on Downloadable Digital Media - Coursework Example

Disruptive Innovation on Downloadable Digital Media Name of Student Name of Institution Class Name and Section Instructor’s First Name and Last Name Month Day, Year Table of Contents Approach to the study 3 Description of the Technology 4 History of the CD and DVD 5 What is a disruptive technology? 7 Disruptive Technologies: Flash Memory and the Development of Future Digital Media 7 Flash memory industry players’ opinions 9 Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovation 11 Deviations from Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovation 12 Competitors in flash memory domain 13 Conclusion 13 References 14 Approach to the study Technology is disrupting every sector of our lives today. There have been dramatic changes to computing over the years, such that computing as it is known today is far much improved that its predecessors. The changes have necessitated a shift in volumes of the storage media, resulted in the development of media that consume lesser power and added the necessary sophistication. According to computerhistory.org, the very first high speed electronic storage media was the magnetic tape developed by Fritz Pfleumer in 1928 and since then, there have been a lot of changes in storage media. Perhaps the most disruptive technologies, at their time, was the development of the Compact Disk and the Digital Versatile Disk. The history of the DVD and the CD dates back to the 1960s and was fully adopted in the late 1980s. They have had a profound impact on computing for many years until the 2000s when modern storage media came into force (Chowdhury, 2013). Why did they become so resilient and so part of the history of computing? Why is it that the innovation behind the Compact Disk lasted for the time stated and what made them become obsolete? These are some of the questions behind this research paper. This paper seeks to understand disruptive technologies and innovations on downloadable media and the impact that they have had on the CD and DVD industries. The inception of flash storage has changed the whole scene of storage media. It has increased capacity to enormous levels, reduced the speeds of transfer and storage and reduced the sizes of storage media. The growth of computing and the coming in of the internet has demanded that the capacities increase and flash storage has done just that (Grossman, 2017). Nowadays, a simple flash drive that can fit on the key holder can be used to store over one terabyte of data, which could be unfathomable at the inception of computing and during the glorious days of the DVD and the CD. This study will involve understanding the history of digital storage media, the reasons why the use of DVD and CDs persisted for so long and why they are currently on the path to being obsolete owing to the rapid changes in technology. It will entail the justification behind the suitability of flash storage and other modern storage media that have replaced the CD and the DVD. The review will seek to fundamentally defend the role that new disruptions play in the market. the technology world as is currently constituted is robust with disruption and the case study of flash memory disrupting the storage domain presents a critical role that the Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovations could be used to explain the many disruptions that continue to happen in many spheres of our lives. Description of the Technology One of the areas of computing that has witnessed so much changes over time is the storage. The reason behind the changes was the need to increase the capacity of the storage media. The earliest media could only store about 960 bits of data. The magnetic tapes of the 1960s tried to increase the capacity by about 10,000 times but as time went by, the volume was still too low. The floppy disks of the 1970s and the 1980s could store about 1.2MB which went to a maximum of 1.44MB. ("Memory & Storage, Timeline of Computer History, Computer History Museum", 2017)It is important to appreciate that at their times, the storage media were of great significance and catered for the computing needs quite effectively at that time. In terms of storage capacity, the 1950s and earlier versions of storage media stored less than one Megabyte of data, which rose to the maximum of 1.44MB in the 1980s with the introduction of floppy drives. The same was improved further in the 1990s with the introduction of the CDs and DVD which increased the storage power by up to 700%. These old storage types were large and cumbersome yet stored less amount of date on them. The earlier magnetic tapes introduced in the 1960s were huge and heavy and could go up to 5kg. The exciting part about these media is that at their time, people thought that they could be the smallest ever to be built. In this case, when the floppy drives were introduced in the 1990s, there was the amazement brought by the reduction in the sizes. The floppy drives weighed just a few grams. The increasing uptake of the internet has meant that storage media for the downloads have also been forced to be increased. This is in addition to the development of other storage capabilities such as cloud infrastructure. Over 3 billion people are connected to the internet globally and the same has increased from 738 million people in 2000. More and more people have the need for larger storage capabilities for storage media. History of the CD and DVD The first Compact Disks were developed in the 1980s and were commercialized in 1982 by Sony Technologies. Sony released the initial versions and has continued to be part and parcel of the development of the media over the years (Rouse, 2017). The initial DVDs hit the market in 1994. The CD has maintained a maximum capacity of 700 megabytes while the DVD has a maximum storage of about 4.7 GB. The CD and DVD are part of optical storage media implying that they are written and read using a laser beam. The main advantage of optical media is that they have increased density and stability as compared to the earlier forms of storage. The DVDs and CDs had a greater lifespan than the magnetic media that preceded data storage. As noted above, the CD and DVD enjoyed a lot of usage for many years and for some reason appeared invincible and could not be replaced. There were loopholes that made the media obsolete. The entry of the internet and the expansion of the scope of computer usage implied that there was urgent need for faster, larger and leaner media to store the data. According to a PriceWatersHouseCoopers Report in 2015, the revenues from streaming revenues direct from the internet surpassed the sale of DVDs. This implies that more and more people preferred to download direct from the internet than to buy a complete DVD or CD containing the content (Rouse, 2017). There has been a drastic decline in the same of the DVDs and the CD from 2006 and in their place, devices like flash memories, Blu-ray players and streaming tools like Apple TV have effectively replaced the DVD as the provider of entertainment or such content. With better tools and internet capabilities such as streaming capabilities and the development of flash storage, the DVDs have been deemed too big to keep around. In the world of computing, technology have to either evolve or risk extinction. This observation is cemented in the Moore’s law and has come to be the determining force behind the changes in storage media. It can also be said to have played a significant role in the ‘extinction’ of the CD and the DVD. Gordon Moore, in 1965, noted that computing would grow and increase in power while decreasing in relative costs at an exponential pace (Fingerhut, 2014). This observation has led to the transformation of computing from a rare and very expensive venture that only a few could afford to a pervasive and very affordable technology that is a necessity of modern living. The CD and the DVD and all the other preceding media types had to give way to more disruptive technologies. One of this technologies is the use of flash storage. In essence, one of the areas of computing that has witnessed a surge in innovations is computing, especially today (Patrick Pullen, 2017). One of the indicators of the fall of the DVD and the CD is the elimination of the disc drive from Macbooks. What is a disruptive technology? According Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard Business School Professor who coined the phrase, Disruptive Technologies‘ in his 1997 best-selling book titled, “The Innovator's Dilemma,” a disruptive technology can be considered to be an invention or a technology that displaces the technology that is currently in place and revolutionizes the ‘best practices’ of the industry. The same can lead to the establishment of a totally new industry. It creates new markets and value to the consumers by disrupting the old way of doing stuff. Disruptive technologies have a potential to transform life and the economy, while making people’s lives better (Christensen, 2016). In the case below, the disruptive technologies changed the way the downloadable digital media works and led to a better experience. Disruptive Technologies: Flash Memory and the Development of Future Digital Media The entry of more digitally advanced media has changed the storage capabilities of most devices. There has been consistent research in the storage media discipline aimed at reducing the sizes, optimizing speeds of the media and increasing the storage capacities. Flash storage is perhaps one of the most pervasive disruptive technologies of the modern times. It is included in various application scenarios: from smartphones to laptops. The advances in technology have led to flash storage and solid state drives to be more common and accessible (Christensen, 2016). In essence, the flash storage media are taking over the place of hard drives and DVDs due to the many advantages associated with them. The increased adoption of flash storage implies that it may one day become the dominant storage option both for individuals and enterprises. Dr. Fujio Masuoka is credited as the inventor behind the flash memory. This was during the time that he worked for Toshiba in the 1980s and the company has continued to be a market leader in the flash memory domain. Flash memory was built from the Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory that preceded earlier memory forms. There are so many reasons that make flash storage to be the ideal downloadable digital media. The many reasons why enterprises and individuals continue to favor the use of flash memory narrows down to performance. The Solid State Drives have a higher performance especially in terms of speed. Whereas the previous media like the DVD took time to be read, the flash memory gets up and running in mere seconds. It can easily handle larger workloads in a quicker manner. In this regard, the businesses that have a strong reliance on quicker access to stored data and the subsequent fast storage. It is also characterized by high durability. In essence, the CDs and DVDs were more prone to damage than the SSDs due to the design style. They are also superior to the spinning disks as the users do not have to worry about losing data in the case of simple damages. In addition to the long durability, the fact that they use fewer resources implies that it is a good bargain (Delgado, 2017). Other savings come in the form of reduced energy costs. Comparative to the amount of storage space and the performance, the price tag for most of them can also be said to be a bargain. The innovation behind the development of flash memory in the sense that it introduced a performance competence that superseded the preceding storage capabilities. They added functionalities such as fast speed, large storage capacity of over a terabyte as compared to the DVDs maximum capacity of about 4.7 Gigabytes, high speeds and generally more value for the consumer in form of durability and ease of use. Flash memory changed the way people store data especially from and to the internet (Delgado, 2017). It altered the status quo that was enjoyed for a long time by the slow CDs and DVDs that preceded it, altered the way people worked and lived, and rearranged the value pools. Flash memory industry players’ opinions The development of flash memory and its subsequent popularity has led to the growth of many companies that have capitalized on it to serve their customers’ needs. Micron and SanDisk are the largest players in the domain although Samsung and Toshiba have also leveraged on their brands to build the same flash memory. As an indicator of the strong operations in the industry, Toshiba, which is the second largest NAND supplier and also a long time manufacturing partner of SanDisk expressed confidence that the operating profit forecast for 2016 would exceed $1.7 billion (Eaton, 2012). The company has in the recent times cited the growing demand for flash memory and has suggested that the market conditions would remain favorable for the technology in the coming future. Western Digital, a key flash maker, beat its third quarter profit estimates and suggested that it is hopeful that the high flash memory demand would further increase in the near future. The company estimated that the production would grow by over 45% in 2017, superseding the 35% growth estimated in the 2016 fiscal year. In 2016, Micron also beat the august quarter estimates and expressed confidence that the demand was not being met fully and that it had the potential of going into the next year. The reasons cited are the same as those cited by Western Digital and Toshiba and basically all the big players in the flash domain. This came at a time when the sale of other media spiraled and went too low, giving low returns for the companies trading in the same. The confidence expressed above indicates that there has been a return on investment in the flash domain and the companies that have invested in it have confidence in the near future (Eaton, 2012). This is an indicator of the impact that flash memory has created in the business world. It has created a new product and changed the shape of the industry, implying that the above companies and others which have developed it have a totally new market that is less competitive and which has high returns. The disruptive nature of the technology has led to its high adoption and subsequent high likeability. To further prove the disruptive nature of flash memory, it is important to analyze it in relation to the Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovation. Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovation The innovation of flash memory which ended up disrupting the storage domain is in line with Christensen’s supposition that the technology deemed as disruptive had to have the capacity to create a new market or create new value streams for the consumers. The inception of the technology was not like the previous technologies. It was also not an improvement of the previous storage media such as the CD and DVDs. According to Christensen, technology driven changes could take two forms. The sustaining technologies are those that continue the industry’s rate of improvement in the overall performance ("ProvenModels - disruptive innovation - Clayton M. Christensen", 2017). These technologies can be alluded to the past changes in the technology of storage media. As noted, there have been improvements in the storage media culminating in the development of the CD and DVD which also had less memory as compared to the expectations of the market. The development of the flash memory did not come as an improvement of a previous storage form. It did not seek to improve the speed, the cost and the size of a previous memory model ("ProvenModels - disruptive innovation - Clayton M. Christensen", 2017). The innovation did seek to remain consistent with the previous or traditional needs as sustaining technologies have done, according to Christensen. It is fundamental to note that the development of flash memory was an overshoot of the aptitude of the consumers to absorb improvements in performance and rather focused on bringing a totally new product to the market. The introduction of the new product was hence to introduce a new standard of competence away from what characterized the previous norms of doing business. At its inception, the flash memories bore all the characteristics of what entails a disruptive business according to Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovation. At the initial time, the product had a smaller target market which grew over the years from the 1990s to today when it grosses the high returns. At inception, it is also important to note that the product was simple and did not appear very attractive as compared to the existing solutions in the market ("ProvenModels - disruptive innovation - Clayton M. Christensen", 2017). The product further appeared less attractive and not in line with the traditional best practices in the market or the metrics used to measure product competitiveness. The product also introduced a new value process in the market that was filled with the traditional models. The entry of flash memory created new value streams for both the enterprises that manufacture them and the consumers. Deviations from Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovation While the technology fits tightly with the Christensen’s Model, there are few deviations that make it to deviate slightly with the model. It is fundamental to point out that the fact that the technology did not create a very ‘new’ value stream from what was in place. Already there were efforts to make an improvement in the same. In the same case, it can be noted that the technology did not necessarily create a fully new or autonomous market disruption but it filled a void that existed in the market. Filling the void in the market should not be mistaken with the Low end disruptions as presented by Christensen’s Model which targets the least-profitable customers at the low end of the value chain. Competitors in flash memory domain The main competitor of Flash storage today is the Hard disk based storage. There is the general consensus that flash storage has the upper hand in providing superior performance especially due to the fact that it benefits heavily from the Moore’s idea of improvement in cost per bit. The main undoing of the same, however, may be the lifecycle and the reliability. It is also expected that the competition for flash memory devices will increase exponentially in the coming years, lead to introduction of new products, more manufacturing companies will enter the market and there will be a surge in industry-wide production capacity (Zetta Staff, 2016). The entry of new manufacturers will fundamentally democratize the pricing models, and the same will reflect in line with Christensen’s ideas and the Moore’s Law. Other companies that are currently becoming competitors in the domain include Spansion, Samsung Electronics Co., Silicon Storage Technology and Sharp Electronics. According to Christensen’s model, the competition in the domain will continue as more players come in. they will increase the levels of innovation which will lead to some companies differentiating their products and becoming more superior, in line with the sustainable perspective. Others may be pushed out of competition or the market. Conclusion Disruption as defined by Christensen is a continuous force that affects modern business processes. It has affected the downloadable digital media and the entire scope of storing data and information both online and offline. The above findings illustrate the fact that flash media storage has had a profound impact on the way information is stored. It further presents the fact that the unprecedented growth in computing power has both been as a result on continuous improvement in line with Moore’s Law on one side, and as a result of disruption of the sector as illustrated in the Christensen’s Model of Disruptive Innovation. The approach to innovation as depicted above indicates a best practice that is currently being witnessed in the technology scope. References Chowdhury, R. (2013). A Look into the Evolution of Storage Devices [1956-2013]. Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from http://www.onextrapixel.com/2013/11/01/a-look-into-the-evolution-of-storage-devices-1956-2013/ Christensen, C. (2016). The innovator's dilemma (1st ed.). Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Review Press. Delgado, R. (2017). Flash Storage: Pros and Cons | SmartData Collective. Smartdatacollective.com. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from http://www.smartdatacollective.com/rick-delgado/281126/reviewing-benefits-and-drawbacks-flash-storage Eaton, K. (2012). The USB Memory Stick Is Facing Extinction | Fastcompany | The Future Of Business. Fast Company. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from https://www.fastcompany.com/1816192/usb-memory-stick-facing-extinction Fingerhut, S. (2014). Does Storage break Moore’s Law? A Look at SSD vs HDD. IT Blog for Data Center Solutions. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from https://itblog.sandisk.com/does-storage-break-moores-law/ Grossman, R. (2017). The Industries That Are Being Disrupted the Most by Digital. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from https://hbr.org/2016/03/the-industries-that-are-being-disrupted-the-most-by-digital Memory & Storage | Timeline of Computer History | Computer History Museum. (2017). Computerhistory.org. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/memory-storage/ Patrick Pullen, J. (2017). 5 Reasons Streaming Is Making DVDs Extinct. Time.com. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from http://time.com/3921019/streaming-dvds/ ProvenModels - disruptive innovation - Clayton M. Christensen. (2017). Provenmodels.com. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from https://www.provenmodels.com/595/disruptive-innovation/christensen Rouse, M. (2017). Fast Guide to CD/DVD - Reference from WhatIs.com. WhatIs.com. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from http://whatis.techtarget.com/reference/Fast-Guide-to-CD-DVD Zetta Staff,. (2016). Advances in Data Storage Technology: A Timeline | Zetta. Zetta.net. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from http://www.zetta.net/about/blog/history-data-storage-technology Read More