InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Large enterprises can expect to find themselves increasingly dealing with similar issues as they begin working more often with such huge files--to archive digitized versions of videotaped marketing presentations or training videos, or audio recordings of the chairperson's speeches, for example. "The need to store large quantities of information is spiraling," says Ray Freeman, president of market-research firm Freeman Associates. "Almost every aspect of the world is moving toward digital, and that affects storage needs."

Consequently, high-volume, fast-access archival systems that can be accessed via a PC using a browser may become even more crucial to enterprise networks, enhancing users' productivity. Ralph Mersiowsky, manager of marketing communications in the removable media storage solutions unit of IBM's storage systems division, puts it this way: "When data is easier to access, it is accessed more."

The latest generation of archival storage products with improved management software and high-capacity drives, coupled with a high-bandwidth network that can move large files quickly, is making it easier and faster to work with such data. IBM develops high-capacity storage products based on an enterprise architecture called Seascape that integrates disk, tape, and optical storage media, powerful processors, and management software. Advanced Digital Information (ADIC), Exabyte, Quantum, and Storage Technology provide similar offerings.

Sony Music is using new storage-management technology from ADIC to preserve more than 600,000 pieces of music, says Malcolm Davidson, senior director of technology for the Sony Music Archive. Ultimately, the archive will consist of more than 400 terabytes of digitized music and images such as album covers. By transferring all its recordings to digital-tape cassettes in the ADIC Automated Mixed-Media Library, Sony is able to catalog the music it owns and manage and preserve this mass of unstructured data on a stable medium. The AML/E that Sony uses hosts four Sony Electronics Inc.'s Digital Tape Format drives, each of which supports tapes that hold up to 42 Gbytes of data; within a year, DTF tapes will hold 100 Gbytes.

Individual pieces of music can easily be recovered and used to create new releases, Davidson says. A key piece of managing the large audio files is ADIC's Amass storage-management software, which lets users access all files in the tape library as though they exist on a single drive, represented by one drive-letter on the desktop. Users can quickly drag and drop files to and from the library.

Data can be streamed onto the tapes at a rate of 12 Mbps; a one-hour album can be archived in about 10 minutes, Davidson says. A speedy archive process is also crucial to the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, where digital versions of test results must be moved from hard disk to tape after a patient is released.

A single chest X-ray can run 20 to 30 Mbytes, says Mark Domalewski, CFO of the hospital's radiology department. A medical study might consist of 200 images stored as separate files, meaning a product relying on hierarchical storage-management technology would have to access the disk and tape 200 times during about 40 hours to move one patient study.

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Photo of Davidson by Edward Santalone