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Plasmon supplies UDO drives and media for HP libraries

UDO answers requirements for secure, cost-effective archival storage
By IIS
Johannesburg, 23 Mar 2004

Plasmon, the market leader for professional data archival solutions, announced today an agreement with HP to deploy Plasmon UDO (Ultra Density Optical) drives and media in HP StorageWorks optical libraries.

"The integration of Plasmon UDO drives and media into HP`s line of optical libraries offers customers the best solution for long-term, permanent archival storage," said Nigel Street, chief executive of Plasmon.

"UDO is extremely cost-competitive compared to magnetic disk and DVD library solutions with much greater reliability."

"HP StorageWorks optical jukeboxes are a key component of HP`s overall Information Lifecycle Management strategy to enable customers to resolve issues of data retention, compliance, and information archiving, retrieval and utilization," said Bob Wilson, vice president and general manager of Nearline Storage at HP.

"Incorporating UDO into HP jukeboxes not only allows us to continue to provide our customers with secure, accessible, long-term storage at an extremely attractive price, but strengthens HP`s overall storage portfolio to offer customers the most effective and complete solutions for their storage and information lifecycle requirements."

Designed for organizations seeking secure retention of important information, UDO succeeds 5.25 inch Magneto Optical (MO) technology as the new professional optical storage standard. However, UDO breaks the mould for optical storage solutions with increased storage capacity and dramatically lower archival storage costs.

"UDO delivers higher performance and much greater cost efficiencies to users who rely on optical storage for their long-term data archiving," said Peter Gerr, analyst, Enterprise Storage Group. "With regulatory compliance mandates requiring IT organizations to retain financial, medical and other valuable records in their original form for longer periods of time, UDO provides users a compelling choice for long-term archival storage."

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About UDO

UDO features blue laser recording rather than the red lasers used in previous optical drives such as MO and DVD. Blue lasers achieve far greater data densities, resulting in dramatically higher media capacities. First generation UDO products have a capacity of 30GB, with capacity reaching 120GB by the third generation. Drive and media capacity are scheduled to double every 18 to 24 months. The densities achieved through blue lasers allow UDO to be priced at $2.00/GB in the first generation, one-fifth the price of MO media.

UDO media is packaged in an ISO standard 5.25 inch cartridge, allowing UDO and MO media to be supported in the same libraries and reducing the cost of existing media migration. Future UDO drives will be backward read-compatible, minimizing future media migration expense.

The Phase Change recording technology used by UDO is field-proven and highly stable. With absolute 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 the world leader in professional archival solutions, providing a comprehensive line of optical libraries, drives and media. 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 2003 sales revenues of $95 million. Worldwide headquarters are in Cambridge, England with US 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.

About IIS

Inside Information Systems(IIS) was founded in 1991 as an IT consultancy specializing in Electronic Document Management and Workflow technologies. IIS is the Southern African service organisation and distribution partner for Plasmon Data Systems large format optical and Ultra Density Optical (UDO) systems. Since 1996 our Plasmon certified engineers and personnel, have provided consulting, implementation and maintenance services for optical storage systems throughout Southern Africa. IIS is also the regional distribution partner for Pegasus Storage Software, SER Enterprise Content Management software and Xythos Web File Sharing systems.

Editorial contacts

Lawrence de Robillard
IIS
084 714 0343
Lawrence@iis.co.za