CES 2017: Seagate and DJI Take Flight to Solve Drone Data (Video)

dji-phantomSeagate and DJI, the world’s leading maker of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), are together at Seagate’s CES booth this week to talk about a new strategic partnership in which the two companies will work together to solve the growing data demands of UAV users.

DJI and Seagate will work to securely and efficiently store, manage, download and share the hundreds of gigabytes of data that can be generated from a single drone flight.

“We’re excited to work with Seagate on developing innovative ways to manage the increased data flows generated by our most sophisticated products,” said Michael Perry, director of strategic partnerships for DJI.

Advanced UAVs like the new DJI Inspire 2 capture 5.2K video, which produces stunning footage but also creates more data than ever. Shooting in 5.2K during a 25-minute drone flight, for example, can generate about 120GB of data. Higher-resolution cameras drive the need for more efficient storage solutions for users to offload, share and backup their footage. With this partnership, DJI and Seagate are actively working together to simplify every step of UAV data workflows.

Drone-generated data is soaring

DJI’s drones and imaging solutions are used in filmmaking, construction, agriculture, conservation, emergency response and many other industries. Last year, some 560 million photos and videos were captured by DJI users.

The global market for commercial drone technology is, well, soaring. Consulting firm PWC says the market could reach $127 billion by 2020, up from an estimated $2 billion in 2016.

10 exabytes of data in flight in 2020

An estimated 10 exabytes of data will be captured by drones in 2020.

“Technology from DJI is creating a ton of data, and that data needs to be stored,” said Tim Bucher, SVP, Seagate consumer solutions. “DJI was looking for a storage partner and we were looking for a drone partner. This is a match made in heaven.”

The DJI partnership continues Seagate’s efforts to offer consumers the most innovative and useful co-branded storage products, Bucher added, as we have with Amazon with the Seagate Duet drive and Microsoft with the Game Drive for Xbox.

“What we’re doing is creating storage solutions to solve customer’s needs in specific applications,” Bucher explained. “This is where people’s content is exploding and data is really taking flight.”

The companies intend to announce their first product collaboration later this year.

Watch the Video: Tim Bucher talks more about Seagate’s partnership with DJI.

2017-12-06T15:32:02+00:00

About the Author:

John Paulsen
John Paulsen is a "Data for Good" advocate, with more than 20 years in the data storage industry. He's helped launch many industry-firsts including HAMR technology, 10K-rpm and 15K-rpm hard drives, drives designed specifically for video and for gaming, Serial ATA drives, fluid dynamic HDD motors, 60TB SSDs, and MACH.2 multi-actuator technology.