White paper - Alternative Storage Technologies

Alternative Storage Technologies Whitepaper

THE COMPLEX NEEDS OF PRESERVATION The world is overflowing with digital data; in fact the digital universe is doubling every two years according to IDC 1 . A share of this digital universe has value in the long term. This is for instance data that is considered part of our cultural heritage, strategic business infor- mation or data that must be preserved for legal reasons. In order to ensure long term survival, these data need to be treated differently than short-lived information. Do the existing storage technologies meet the complex requirements involved in long-term pre- servation of data? What are the unique character- istics of the available alternatives? These are some of the issues we will look into. In our evaluation of the alternatives we will in particular focus on the following aspects: • How well is data security and integrity maintained? • How easy will it be to access the data in the future? • How cost-efficient is the technology in a long term perspective?

What does «digital» really mean?

When a file is stored digitally, the data is stored as binary codes, i.e. sequences of numbers (0 and 1,) which are written on to a storage medium. By decoding these numbers, a perfect copy of the original file is brought back. “Digital storage”, including the Cloud, normally means digital application of analogue storage medium.

1 IDC, “The Digital Universe of Opportunities”, April 2014 www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/index.htm