Plasmon,
the market leader for professional data archival solutions, today announced that
the company has shipped more than two petabytes of UDO (Ultra Density Optical)
archival storage library capacity. Two petabytes is equal to 200 times the print
collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Shipments of Plasmon G-series
libraries powered by UDO reached the milestone less than 10 months after the new
technology was launched.
Plasmon offers UDO libraries, drives and media
through distribution channel partners, system integrators and other OEMs. The
two petabyte milestone figure excludes shipments by Hewlett Packard, one of
Plasmon's key OEM partners, which also offers a family of UDO optical libraries
as part of its Storageworks product line.
"The rate of new data creation has never been higher. In addition, the
combination of rich historic-data applications like CRM, and the ease of new
data-set creation from data warehouses means that reference data is likely the
fastest growing information category for most organizations," said Robert Gray,
Research Analyst at IDC, Framingham, MA. "Increasing compliance requirements and
the opportunity to generate business value from this information is underpinning
new technology investments to store, access and manage this. UDO technology is
well positioned to support this growing need."
UDO libraries have already been installed at over 500 customer sites around
the world across a wide range of industries including health care, financial
services, government, retail services and manufacturing. UDO customers include:
- prominent investment banks in New York, London and Frankfurt,
- large, well-established on-line trading companies,
- multinational insurance companies and national pension funds,
- federal and state government institutions in the U.S. and in Europe,
- international and national health care delivery organizations,
- state television and radio broadcasters in Italy and Germany,
- retail and entertainment companies.
"Vienna International Airport evaluated a number of storage solutions for
archiving all airport management information including maps, construction
drawings, building systems and legal documents. We chose UDO as it provides
reliable and secure long-term storage, while allowing documents to be retrieved
very quickly," said Christian Vesely, Executive Vice President Information &
Communication Systems, Vienna International Airport. "It offers significant cost
benefits, and by making documents available through UDO, we will also save
considerable office space when most departments move to our new Office Park by
October 2004."
Other recent milestones for UDO include application support by more than 35
software vendors including offerings from IBM Tivoli, EMC Legato and Veritas.
UDO is also the only blue laser optical technology to receive international
standard certification from both Ecma and ISO.
"We have been working hard to keep up with the rapid ramp-up of UDO sales,"
said Christopher Harris, President of Plasmon. "UDO's data authenticity and
media longevity have clearly been well received by the market. Its sales success
demonstrates strong demand for cost-effective, professional archival storage
that helps organizations address regulatory requirements, protect against
litigation and drive maximum value from information assets."
UDO, which features blue lasers for recording rather than the red lasers used
in previous optical drives such as MO and DVD, achieves far greater data
densities, resulting in dramatically higher media capacities. UDO will be
introduced at 60GB and 120GB media capacities over the next four years. Total
Cost of Ownership (TCO) is about one-fifth the cost of previous generation MO,
much lower than competitive hard drive-based solutions and very attractive when
compared to tape offerings.
The Phase Change recording technology used by UDO is field-proven and highly
stable. With true Write Once authenticity and a media life of 50+ years, UDO
meets the most demanding requirements of regulatory agencies and other
authorities for the secure, long-term storage of information.
About Plasmon
Plasmon is a leader in professional archival solutions, providing the
industry's most comprehensive line of optical and tape libraries, drives and
media and NAS/SAN storage networking solutions. Customers include corporations,
institutions and government agencies worldwide and are backed by a global
service and support network. Founded in 1985, Plasmon is listed on the London
Stock Exchange (LSE: PLM), and had fiscal year 2004 sales revenues of $90
million. Worldwide headquarters are in Cambridge, United Kingdom with U.S. Sales
and Manufacturing based in Colorado. Plasmon has regional sales offices
throughout Europe and North America. For more information, visit www.plasmon.com or www.plasmon.co.uk.
Source: Businesswire
