Optical Storage Symposium 2006 to be
held in Tokyo in October

Space is limited; sign up at www.osta.org today!

Optical Storage Symposium 2006 to be held in Tokyo in October Space is limited; sign up at www.osta.org today! OSTA’s fifth annual Optical Storage Symposium will be held in Tokyo this year, on October 5. An overview of the agenda follows. Although priority will be given to members of OSTA and CDs21, guests may be allowed with approval of the Association if space permits. Contact debbieosta.org for information.

OSS 2006 Session Agenda

A Current Analysis of the Optical Industry Time: 9:00am A panel of industry analysts representing the optical drive, semiconductor, display, and camera markets will provide information on the current state of these industries and developments that might influence future trends. One of the important topics will be how high-definition products will gain importance in the consumer electronic and PC markets.

Moderator:
David Bunzel President, Santa Clara Consulting Group; President, OSTA

CDs21/OSTA Initiatives
Time: 10:30am
OSTA and CDs21 support the optical storage industry with a number of important industry initiatives. This session will provide more detail about these ongoing and future activities.

Moderator:
David Bunzel - President, Santa Clara Consulting Group; President, OSTA

Luncheon
12:00pm
Bentos Provided – Sponsored by Mitsubishi Kagaku Media/Verbatim

The Interoperability Eco-System: Who’s doing what?
Time: 14:00pm
Hear from our panel of experts from various industry organizations what each group is doing to bring interoperability to consumer devices – and how their solution fits with other organization’s efforts.

Moderator:
Bob Zollo - President, Software Architects; OSTA Chairman

OSTA and Ecma International Join Forces to Fast-Track ISO Standard

ISO approval of industry-wide, optical disc archival grade testing specification anticipated in July 2007

ODAT WG2

Going forward, OSTA and its ODAT business promotion working group WG2 will focus on:

• Programs intended to create infrastructure and education to support the technical specification

• Building a sustainable business model and implementation plan

The Future of Optical
Time: 15:30pm
A panel of experts talking about various emerging optical technologies and applications including Near Field Recording, Holographic Storage, Super RENS, and three dimensional memory technology.

Moderator:
Ted Matsui - Corporate Councilor; Ricoh

A reception will follow from 17:30 to 19:00 pm, sponsored by Sony, SAI and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media/Verbatim.

For additional information or to register for the conference, check OSTA’s web site at http://www.osta.org, or contact Debbie Maguire at debbieosta.org. Priority will be given for members of CDs21 and OSTA. Members of these organizations will receive complimentary registration, but seating is limited and will be offered at a first reserved/first allowed basis. Guests may be allowed with confirmation of the Association if space is available.

Optical Disk Archive Test (ODAT)

Update ODAT WG2 Meeting in Tokyo, October 6, will follow OSS 2006

Great strides have been made in advancing an industry-wide, optical disc archival grade testing specification in recent months. Since its formation in Sept. 2005, OSTA’s ODAT Committee has worked with a multi-national group of industry experts to develop a draft standard. In July, OSTA and Ecma International announced an agreement to work together to finalize this specification, with the ultimate goal of obtaining an ISO standard available to industry for broad implementation. The project will take place under Ecma’s expert guidance within its TC31 Optical Disks and Disk Cartridges working group.

Ecma is the inventor and main practitioner of the concept of "fast tracking" of specifications drafted in international standards format through the process in Global Standards Bodies such as the ISO. “Since 1986, when fast tracking was introduced to ISO, over 75 percent of the total of about 300 fast-tracked standards have been managed through Ecma,” said Jan van den Beld, Ecma Secretary General.

“Under the OSTA organization, we brought together various independent groups that were working on similar ideas, in order to reach consensus on test methodology. Now we are partnering with Ecma in order to leverage their expertise in the creation of broadly adopted international standards,” said Chris Smith, chairman of OSTA’s ODAT Committee, general manager of Sony Corporation’s Data Media Business Development Center in Boulder, CO, and active member of Ecma TC31 that will develop the international standard. “The anticipated end result is increased user awareness of archival quality of optical media as a critical purchase parameter. This will enhance customers’ ability to make informed purchases appropriate to their application needs by providing a standardized evaluation result indicator. This product differentiation is intended to eliminate any guesswork that takes place when deciding which media to use when long life of data is a desirable attribute.”

“From consumers who want to protect treasured photos and important school, business or tax records to commercial users who must comply with an increasing array of regulations requiring archival of correspondence, email and financial records, we believe there is a demand for a reliable optical disc archive standard rated for a longer life for storing important files on CDs and DVDs,” said David Bunzel, OSTA president.

 

Optical Archive Workshop

In parallel activity, the ODAT group, working in conjunction with NIST’s Government Information Preservation Working Group and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, presented an Optical Archiving Workshop in Washington, DC, in June. Participants discussed the expectations, assumptions, and needs of various types of application users in order to best fit its products for those applications.

Fall Quarterly Meetings to be Held in Tokyo

OSTA’s fall quarterly meetings, traditionally held in San Francisco in September, have been modified this year to coincide with the 2006 Optical Storage Symposium in Tokyo. OSS will be held on Oct. 5 at the Akihabara Convention Center in Tokyo. Selected quarterly committee meetings will be held at the convention center on Oct. 6:

• UDF 9:00am (All day)
• ODAT 9:00am – noon
• DVD Compatibility 1:30pm – 4:00pm

The next meetings for the MPV Committee and the Board of Directors will be held at the Embassy Suites in South San Francisco, on Dec. 4, when the meetings return to their traditional location.

Going forward, OSTA and its ODAT business promotion working group WG2 will focus on programs intended to create infrastructure and education surrounding this work. This was a primary focus of during the last OSTA quarterly meeting in June, where the ODAT met for a full day, where issues were discussed and proposals were reviewed on test plans and implementation schemes. At the upcoming meeting in Tokyo, it’s time to revise the proposals that have been discussed, or look at any others that people wish to submit. “Now that the specification is will underway, and continuing through the standards work at Ecma, we’re entering the second phase of our effort, to build a sustainable business model and implementation plan,” Smith said.

“We especially wish to hear from the market side and use the input we receive to help craft this program. People with an interest in creating a well defined, diversified market with controls in place related to archival grade media are welcome to attend and interact with the industry insiders. The ODAT group is motivated to listen and try to incorporate creative ideas into this program in order to serve its markets better. I encourage everyone interested in moving this initiative toward actual implementation to plan ahead by building consensus on direction within your individual company and prepare related presentations or proposals.”

UDF’s Holographic Storage Ad Hoc Group

Group to explore file system requirements for holographic optical
storage and other high capacity storage

OSTA’s UDF Committee has formed an ad hoc group to address industry compatibility and file system requirements for holographic storage on optical disc. Holography is expected to be an important storage technology for the future, because is goes far beyond the density limits and data transfer rates of today’s storage solutions, enabling hundreds of gigabytes to be stored on an optical disc by recording through the depth of the disc, rather than on the surface. The ad hoc committee is preparing a white paper on the subject. Watch for it later this fall on OSTA’s website, www.osta.org.

Photo Backup Roundtable

OSTA held a Photo Archiving Roundtable meeting at the quarterly meeting in June. Twenty participants representing PC and camera manufacturers, as well as optical storage software, writer and media businesses attended.

This was the first OSTA digital picture archiving roundtable to discuss the importance of digital picture backup and archiving, and what OSTA can and should do.

PMA figures estimate that 20 billion digital images were taken in 2005 and a cumulative 55 billion digital images since 2000. Of this more than two-thirds have not been printed and are likely to reside on an end-users’ PC hard disk drive. An article from storagereview.com notes, "The service life of a modern hard disk is usually about three to five years." While it is unclear what percentage of end-users are backing up their digital images, what is clear is there is a significant issue looming in the not-too-distant future with hard disk drives failing with unprotected photos and no printed copy of these photos.

In order to address this issue OSTA felt it was necessary to get the various groups with a vested interest in this issue to collaborate on ways to encourage end-users to back up their photos. PC-OEMs have an interest because the digital images reside on a PC that they have sold, and could offer bundled software to encourage easy archiving; software companies that supply software to burn files to CD and DVD media have the applications necessary to accomplish this; media companies are working to establish reliable long-term optical media so consumers have confidence that their photos will be able to be retrieved in the future; photo companies recognize that digital photography has changed the way people manage and protect their image libraries. Topics discussed include current alternatives for protecting images, the PC OEM’s wish list, options available through software; education and implementation; and next steps. Suggested next steps include an outreach program to industry and consumers, to provide FAQ on how to back up photos, and outline best practices for selecting, using, labeling and storing optical discs, as well as reasons to use optical discs for photo archiving.

OSTA
19925 Stevens Creek Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014
USA




David Bunzel
President
(408) 253-3695
(408) 253-9938 FAX
dbunzel@osta.org

Visit OSTA on the
Web at www.osta.org

Newsletter Editor
Jan Johnson
MultiPath
Communications
jan@multipathcom.com

 

• 
  
  On The Horizon
  By David Bunzel, President
  
  

  We’re very excited about the rapidly approaching OSS 2006, which achieves two milestones. Not only is this the first time we’ve held it in Tokyo, it is also our fifth annual event. We hope some of you can join us there; if not, please watch the website afterwards to see key presentations from the symposium.

• In an article on "Data Storage of Tomorrow,” published in CIO-Today (Aug. 24, 2006) industry analysts and storage executives presented their views on the future of data storage, and the need to archive critical data. Among the trends covered, Yankee Group analyst Sal Caprizzi predicted that portable optical disk drives will be important for archiving and data protection five years from now.

• Today, OSTA has multiple activities underway to address the critical issues of data archiving. At the consumer level, we’ve been exploring ways to help educate users that optical discs are a convenient, inexpensive solution for storing digital photos that provides safe, long-term storage and are easily transportable in the event of a disaster. Our ODAT Committee has been hard at work on an industry-wide specification for an archival-grade optical disc specification. And, the ad hoc UDF committee on holographic storage is working to define industry compatibility and file system requirements for next generation, high capacity holographic storage on optical disc.

• We welcome any feedback you may have on this newsletter, and encourage interested industry participants to attend our next quarterly meeting. For more information on membership, visit our website at www.osta.org or contact Debbie Maguire, OSTA Administrator, at (408) 253-3695, or by e-mail at debbieosta.org.

• Warmest regards,
  David Bunzel
  OSTA President