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Holographic Data Storage -- Too Kewl For School?

Two events in the past few weeks drew my attention back to holographic data storage. InPhase Technologies announced it raised $20 million in a D round of financing. Its Tapestry 300 GB disk and drive has been about a year away for about 18 months. Now, development delays are nothing new in technology development, ask Microsoft about just about any version of Windows, and Turner Broadcasting has been using the InPhase drives in a pilot for a while, so it probably will ship it eventually.

The same can’t be said for its erstwhile competitor Aprilis. After shareholder Dow Corning snapped up the company in 2006, it decided to cut its losses and posted an announcement on the company’s Web site that it's no longer sampling products as of Feb. 1.

When it comes to the wow factor it’s hard to beat holographic storage. The technology promises huge storage capacity on a random access WROM medium with reasonable data rates, 50-year storage lifetimes, and low power requirements.

The question I have to ask is, will we need it by the time it gets here? Most organizations have switched from optical disks to CAS type solutions for WORM, while disk data densities and power management are steadily advancing.

What do you think? The comments are open.

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