According to a Reuters piece, home servers will become the next standard for storing data, rendering CD racks obsolete. Even more, this is a trend that is believed to become increasingly noticeable by 2012, at least as far as the U.S. market is concerned. Be that as it may, this trend is also part of the digitalization of homes everywhere.

The main factor behind the digitalization process is to be found in that home entertainment systems require more and more space. If, in the past, there were users that had to fill entire walls with CD libraries, nowadays a more, yet not fully exploited solution is available. This is based on home servers, which most of the times are built using a home computer with a large storage capacity. However, not even this solution may be sufficient to deal with the large number of high-capacity files that, in a not-too-distant future, will have to be stored on home storage solutions.

Home servers act as a central storage hub for all the content in a particular home. This solution can also be used for streaming or accessing music via multiple devices that can connect to the server. Also, home servers can be setup to automatically backup files, so the user will always have a way to access his data. Moreover, the home server will occupy less space than a normal CD library.

According to Forester Research, by 2012, the U.S. market will grow to more than 4.5 million home server users, while the Diffusion Group predicts that the number will go as high as 21.5 million in all of North America by 2015. "The digital assets that people have are clearly climbing, and with that comes the potential need for a home server," analyst J.P. Gownder says.

Home servers will not have as requirement only the provision of the users with increased storage, as they will also need to come with synching, streaming and management capabilities. These are the solutions that are expected to make the market grow.