Sony announced in May that it had acquired Optical Archive Inc, a company that makes optical storage systems for data centers. The goal of this purchase is to leverage the technology to offer new capabilities in hardware design for data centers. Specifically, Sony is attempting to meet the demands of the burgeoning "cold archive" market.
Cold archive is data that has to be held for a long time, but isn't accessed frequently. Cloud-photo storage or information that must be held on to for legal purposes is typically put into cold storage. This keeps it from using up the more-expensive to maintain servers.
This may mark an increase in the amount of information that data centers can store long-term. This will be especially good for organizations that rely on colocation storage for legal records or keeping long lists of customer inventories. Cold archive storage offers very completive rates for keeping hold of this kind of information. By making it easier for companies to hold data long term, this method of storage can hopefully drive costs down overall.
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