What Needs Huge Amounts of Bulk Storage
Modern magnetic tape cartridges have quite a bit of native capacity, say 800 GB going to 1.6 TB shortly. Is there a need for much larger capacity? As some requirements for bulk storage go into the petabyte and above range, the answer may be yes. Consider just a couple of possible uses:
- The patterns of gene expression in our DNA is governed by the epigenome that sits just on top of the genome and outside it through something called epigenetic marks. In contrast to the 25,000 or so genes, the number of epigenetic marks "is certainly in the millions. A full epigenome map will require major advances in computing power. When completed, the current Human Genome Project, already under way in Europe, will make the original Human Genome Project look like homework that 15th century kids did with an abacus," (Time Magazine, January 18, 2010, page 53). One can speculate that a large amount of storage will also be required to support future research and commercial efforts around genomic data. Now the first thought is that the ideal media for this would be hard disk for random access and performance reasons. However, the processing may very well be sequential and tape (surprise, surprise) performs very well as compared with disk in sequential analysis. Moreover, even though a lot of money may be available to this effort, having even more cost-efficient storage than is currently possible might be able to speed things up. And Opternity's new tape technology could be in place down the road when the need heats up for this additional storage.
- In the storing of medical images, regulations like HIPPA are leading health care organizations and providers to maintain medical images, such as MRIs, for very long periods of time. Couldn't this information be stored as medical images as a service at a cloud storage supplier as part of a large electronic health records repository? The basic purpose would be able to retain a history of medical images for an individual, but it is often not necessary to retrieve the images at the place where they were created. Too many examples are available today of copies of medical records being physically shipped from one medical facility to another. However, another possible use is for clinical studies using electronic health records where personal information is kept anonymous. A solution such as that proposed by Opternity could process large numbers of medical images sequentially (summary information would be in main memory or disk).
Something New, Something Old
Opternity is introducing optical tape as a "new" technology. Optical storage is, of course, nothing new, but laser recording on thin film media, i.e. optical or laser tape is. The creators of Opternity's optical tape happen to have a strong, track record as they were the inventors of recordable, optical storage at Philips/CDC. And every time you use a CD or DVD, you know how well-proven that technology is! Opternity has built a working model proving the laser tape concept and demonstrating the capacity increase.
Opternity's first objective for its patented technology is to develop a Reference Design and manufacture multiple prototype units for which it needs funding. The company then plans to create a Laser Media Trust (LMT) consortium whose member licensees would develop the actual optical tape drives and optical media. Opternity would probably derive most of its revenues from royalty sales.
According to Opternity, the proposed laser tape drives could work within existing LTO libraries, which means that customers would only have to buy tape drives and media. It also means that customers could continue to use their existing tape libraries with LTO-based products for standard purposes, such as backup, but could also use LMT-based products to support ultra-high-capacity, active archiving requirements. Overall, that ability to work with LTO libraries is a considerable benefit as it hugely reduces the barrier to entry for optical tape, as no switching costs are incurred for tape libraries.
The Challenge Opternity Faces
Opternity is at that stage of its lifecycle where it needs initial funding, though really not that much to get started relative to other manufacturing startups. But getting money in still difficult economic times is not easy. Consider this:
- Customers who might be delighted to buy the end product do only that. They typically do not invest in products.
- Storage vendors already have their own agendas and product mixes; investing in a "new" technology requires thinking out of the box, including the finding of an internal advocate. Even though the funding required for Opternity's technology might be considered almost petty cash for some large vendor R&D organizations, getting them involved may be difficult.
- Venture capitalists like to play in markets where the upside is potentially high; even though the failure rate of startups is high, one big win in a venture capitalist's portfolio can compensate for the losses; another issue is that venture capitalists need to raise funds themselves in order to invest so if the companies they invest in are in glamorous technology areas, the chance they will succeed is higher. And SSDs is the glamour storage technology today even though only some SSD-focused vendors will succeed.
So where does that leave Opternity? As with any new and untested technology, the prospects for optical tape are highly uncertain. However, even though new IT solutions tend to take longer and cost more money to bring to market than anticipated, Opternity's laser tape would seem to be a product that can be successfully delivered in a real manufacturing environment, in contrast to hypothetical products like holographic storage. Yes, there are sales and marketing risks, as well, but nothing that seems insurmountable.
Still a question often raised in circumstances like this is what is the addressable market? For Opternity the answer has two parts. The first is that two or three licensees can probably find enough revenue and profitability to justify their risk of entering the market in the first place. The second is that in some cases, the existence of a product where none had existed before can create a larger addressable market. In the case of Opternity, organizations may decide that a low-cost, non-volatile storage technology will allow them to keep information they might once have thrown away. Such a technology could benefit numerous organizations, including NASA and other budget-beleaguered agencies. And, if that is the case, then Opternity and its optical tape licensees may find themselves doing very well indeed.
