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Why Optical Is Dead: Page 2 of 3

Then, what I believe was the big change took place -- compliance disk archiving by vendors like EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Permabit Technology Corp. , and Archivas Inc. , now Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) . These were systems that aimed right at optical, taking away its scalability advantage by adding nodes of disks, as opposed to blank optical platters, and by providing a WORM file system.

In addition to negating the apparent advantages of optical, disk also brought the advantages of disk archiving. This meant more than just speed of access, it also offered ease of access. Now you can use a simple NFS or CIFS mount point, for example. Also, disk optimization through technologies like data deduplication and compression made the disk itself more efficient, to offset the slim price advantage that optical may have still had.

The final issue here still remains migration to the archive. The problem is that most migration software applications are written for the world of tape libraries or optical jukeboxes. This adds complexity to the application that is no longer needed. Global file systems that treat file data paths the way DNS servers treat IP addresses are an excellent option. There also are applications like Enigma Software Group USA LLC 's SmartMove that keep things simple.

And there are companies like Ocarina Networks , which uses special algorithms to optimize data that does not typically deliver good results with standard de-duplication (images, for example) prior to moving the data to a disk archive. This allows not only the migration of data, but also increases the efficiency of how that data is stored in the archive.

There will be attempts to resurrect optical; Blue-ray is an example. But eventually disk-based archiving will do to optical, and eventually tape, what iTunes is doing to DVDs and the video store.