First Published in Imaging Business Magazine November 1997

Storing more for less

Making the right Jukebox choice

In the early days of imaging, it used to be simple picking the components of a storage subsystem for an upcoming installation. First, you would find out how many documents the customer wanted online and for how long. Then you picked a jukebox that could hold the number of worm drives and media for that particular application. You only had to consider one type of media, that being worm, and the only thing you had to worry about was which size to choose, 5 1/4", 12" or 14".

Things are not so simple any more. There are more choices for drives, jukeboxes, storage management software and of course, media. VARs have to ask more questions about the customer's application to make sure both short term and long-term storage needs are met. We have to put on our Record Manager's hat to understand the document retention schedules to not only help organize how we store the documents, but to also choose which media is the best for the client. Wearing just a techie's hat can prove to be a mistake over the long run for your customer as well as future sales for your business. And it all starts with picking the right media type.

Worm, rewritable optical, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, and now DVD-R and DVD-RW are just some of the choices we have to make to be sure the customer is served appropriately.

How does an integrator choose and where is the market going?

"CD-ROM is doing extremely well today", says Gary Brach, President of Smart Storage, a maker of storage management software. "Since practically every PC shipped today has a CD-ROM drive in it, selling CD-ROM technology is extremely easy. Most end-users today work with a CD-ROM drive everyday at work and home, so they understand the technology and that makes it easy to accept as a storage solution. CD's are ubiquitous."

Brach says CD-ROM jukeboxes' growth rate is doubling every year over Magneto Optical (MO) devices. Smart Storage's Brach estimates that 4600 CD Jukeboxes will be sold this year and this is growing rapidly as compared with the MO market which is at a relatively flat 16,000-20,000 jukeboxes a year.

Why are CD-ROM jukeboxes becoming so popular? A lot of it has to do with the cost of the media and the standards that currently are in place. With CD-R media prices in the $2-$4 range, compared with $80-$100 for MO or worm media, that can mean a large savings in ongoing costs for any company.

A concern that seems to always come out of the mouths of customers is one of standards. With the ISO 9660 standard for CD-ROM in place, this insures the readability between thousands of installed drives that is not possible with either worm or MO. It also can provide a future migration path to DVD.

One of the biggest knocks against CD-ROM has been the inability to write small amounts of information to the disk incrementally without the high overhead that multi-session CR-R creates. The new packet writing technology seems to solve this problem. Smart Storage has been implementing packet writing within their standalone and network CD-R drives, and plans on releasing a jukebox version of their packet writing software in the first quarter of 1998. This should only increase the popularity of CD jukeboxes.

But what about MO jukeboxes? There is still a strong need for rewritable optical and they are not going away anytime soon. According to Peter Way, Product Marketing Manager for Hewlett-Packard's Optical Jukebox Business Unit, HP does not see much of an impact from CD-ROM on their MO jukebox sales (HP estimates that they posses a 60% market share of MO jukeboxes and growing). Way believes that CD-ROM and DVD for that matter will make up the low-end of the market which he describes as the basic file and storing products area. For those customers that need a solution for mission critical applications, then the ruggedness that MO jukeboxes offer is the answer. Those "needing durability and high performance will use MO or worm devices instead of CD-ROM" according to Way.

The current storage on a 5 1/4" MO disk is 2.6GB and HP is expected to introduce a 5.2GB disk in the spring. At the same time, HP will be introducing a 5 /14" jukebox storing 1.2 Terrabytes - an area once only thought of as the domain of 12" platters. HP's Way expects storage on a 5 1/4" optical disk to grow to 9GB in 1999 or 2000 thereby competing with the expected storage of DVD while still providing faster performance and greater durability than DVD.

T.M. Ravi, VP of Marketing for the Cheyenne Division of Computer Associates also sees a strong demand for Magneto Optical (MO) media. Cheyenne's Optical Server for NT is still their most popular jukebox management software choice for VARs wishing to integrate MO devices. Cheyenne has several different jukebox management software lines depending on the customer needs - CD, worm, MO, or tape. One of the advantages of Cheyenne's Optical Server software is that it allows the spanning of multiple MO disk surfaces. This allows the systems administrator or VAR to make the entire jukebox appear as one drive or as many drives as their application dictates.

So what about the future? Where does DVD fit in? Many expect DVD to have an impact on the storage market, but not in the immediate future. Computer Associate's Ravi says that DVD will begin to make it an impact in the later part of 1998. Until the standards for DVD are agreed upon (another Beta vs. VHS fight?), then MO, worm and CD will continue to be the primary choice for storage.

Steve Goodfellow is principle of Access Systems, Inc., an independent consultancy in Knowledge Management and technology assessment. Steve can be reached at (315) 682-1188 or via e-mail.