Discontinuation of Polaroid film means big-picture changes to the network.

It was almost inevitable in the age of the digital camera; Polaroid is discontinuing production of Polaroid film for its once ubiquitous “instant” cameras. For many, this means the loss of nostalgic memories with a family camera.
However, while digital cameras have filled the need for instant photography more effectively than the Polaroid camera could have done, the analog processes of light + film + developer fluid in a handy-dandy photograph-sized pack found interesting niche industrial uses – industrial uses now impacted by the end of Polaroid’s film.
For example, doctors used it in medical imaging. Archeologists used the portability of Polaroid in combination with X-ray photography to examine ruins without disturbing them.
Additionally, Polaroid film is impossible to retouch without there being signs of alteration. This meant that law enforcement and criminal justice relied on them.
In these industries and others, the Polaroid camera filled a niche that will now have to be filled by digital technology; and in many cases, that digital technology will place new demands on the network.
For example, medical imaging requires very high detail; shots on film provided a low-cost way of providing that detail. Equivalent digital technology would produce images that have extremely large file sizes. Instead of passing the photo instantly from doctor to doctor, the files would be transferred from doctor’s computer to doctor’s computer – or to a photo printer. Since a photo printer of sufficient resolution would be rather expensive, it is likely that a hospital might only have a few of them, networked together. And, of course being forced to move to digital from film, doctors would take the new capabilities of digital to converse with doctors across long distances – that means traffic on the WAN.
One of the medical companies that has already gone “filmless” is CliniTech – they’re using NetQoS’s end-to-end application performance monitoring tools to track the performance of their digital radiology application, so that they can make sure all the doctors and nurses can view these digital images from anywhere in their healthcare system. They may have been forced to go digital by Polaroid’s obsolescence, but once there, the advanced applications of digital technology will then become expected.
The archeologists are in a similar situation. Instead of taking photos back with them to be analyzed locally and taken back with them on the flight to their laboratories, once they have been forced to move from Polaroid to digital cameras, they will probably then use satellite communication to send those photos back to remote colleagues immediately.
Perhaps most complicated of all are the law enforcement personnel. A move to all-digital photography would require some sort of watermark-like digital signing to certify that images were not retouched. The networks that these images reside on will have to keep a very tight audit trail which includes EXIF-type data for the full path of the image in order for it to effectively be used in court. And, of course, they would need to transfer the images over a secure network to prevent people from altering or destroying digital evidence.
It just goes to show you that even things that you may never have thought about can impact network performance in ways that are nearly unforeseeable.
How are you being affected by the Polaroid film discontinuation? Leave a comment below.
(Special thanks to Carol Schiraldi for giving us this story lead.)