All systems go for MO

Despite emerging competition from DVD, magneto-optical is still the pick of storage formats.

By Hannah Birtles

Although it has been predicted that the magneto optical (MO) disc format will eventually be replaced to a large extent by DVD, industry experts agree that MO's ability to store large amounts of data cost-effectively together with its fast access times is still making it a popular option for companies with large data storage requirements.

This year, MO drives reach their eleventh birthday, with the first in this format being shipped back in 1988. Over that period, the technology has passed through four generations of development, progressing from 650MB to the current 5.2GB. During the time, the speed of the drives has radically improved and compatible alternatives like WORM (write once, read many) have enhanced the technology.

According to IDC, the worldwide market for MO grew from 1,417,000 units shipped in 1997 to 1,819,000 in 1998. This figure is expected to top two million this year.

The main players in the industry are committed to a plan that will increase the capacity of 5.25" MO drives until at least the end of 2000. (Source OSTA)

"12 months ago many in the industry were predicting that MO was dead, what with the advent of DVD," said Gordon Kerr, product manager for the information technology products division of Sony. "But this is now anything but the situation."

He said this is evident by the fact that Sony's local sales for MO have doubled so far this year.

Ian Selway, ISG market development manager with Hewlett-Packard Australia, agrees. "MO has had a good year in terms of sales and the overall market seems to be strong, it presently accounts for 10 per cent of HP's overall storage sales," he said.

Mr Selway said there is a good acceptance of the technology now, due to the increased use of such systems as workflow and the need to back-up mission critical applications.

"What has been interesting in the market place is the number of firms adopting MO for use in hierarchical storage management (HSM) solutions," he said. "Three to four years ago, all talk in the storage industry was about HSM as the next 'big thing' but the uptake was not strong back then. It is only starting to happen now."

He added that while DVD has been identified as the storage system that will overtake MO, this will not be for sometime as there is still confusion over DVD standards, causing companies to question which camp to back, and there are yet to be any DVD jukeboxes released. HP does not plan to release DVD jukeboxes for 12 to 18 months.

"MO will be replaced in the long term but it still has a strong presence amongst storage products," Mr Selway said.

Storage specialist AustStor added that recurring predictions of the demise of MO have been slightly exaggerated. "Notwithstanding new alternatives such as CD and DVD, magneto-optical still delivers in the areas of speed, capacity and acceptance," said AustStor managing director, Lachlan MacDonald. "What's more, it enjoys an internationally accepted standard."

He said lower prices and higher capacity had boosted the sales of 5.25 inch MO jukeboxes, and last year's introduction of 5.2 gigabyte 5.25 inch drives gave both existing owners and prospects new reason to believe in the technology.

"With virtually no increase in the price of disks or drives, we've been able to double the capacity of our Plasmon storage solutions, and I'm confident the year 2000 will see the advent of disks with capacity exceeding 9.2GB."

He said in addition, MO jukeboxes had become more affordable to more customers.

"CD jukeboxes are a less expensive option that do sell in larger numbers than MO, but while being very attractive for some applications, they have never really been a competitive threat in the high-end market," Mr MacDonald commented.

MO ADVANTAGES

The latest 5.25 inch MO drives offer 5.2GB in capacity, and by mid-2000 new releases will see the capacity rise to 9.1GB. While CD is cheaper, it does not offer the same capacities and access times as the 5.25 inch drives. Compared to tape, MO also has the advantage of offering faster access times.

Mr Kerr said even though Sony plans to release its first DVD+RW drive in August this year, the drives will still have less capacity and slower access time than 5.25 inch drives which can now store up to 5.2GB and offer access times of 20 milliseconds compared to access times of 100ms to 200ms with DVD+RW.

He said MO has seen strong growth in two areas of late in particular, document management storage which is gaining a lot of jukebox business, and professional storage such as printers and industrial machinery facilities with CAD operators.

According to Sony, there are currently four main markets adopting MO technology: telecommunications carriers who use MO to store all their billing and call recordings; hospitals and health organisations which capture images such as CAT scans and X-rays, and then archive them off to MO; police forces; and taxation departments.

These industries represent a change in the traditional users of MO, from typical groups such as desktop publishers, Mr Kerr said.

Mr MacDonald said because of MO's attraction as a near-line medium for users who have large document databases where demand is evenly distributed across all files, around 50 per cent of all MO users are involved in document management and/or document image capture. He claimed most MO jukebox users don't keep media completely off-line. When these users accumulate more media than can be handled by a jukebox, they will usually acquire another jukebox.

"There is no doubt that MO is also the best solution where large numbers of users are involved. The more people needing to access media, the more likely it is that media will have to be swapped, and no removable storage offers faster access than MO.

"Until a credible alternative arrives, 5.25 inch MO drives still provide the best solution for fast access to data, and this situation should not change in the foreseeable future," Mr MacDonald said.

According to AustStor, new technologies like fibre channel and thin servers for direct network attachments are becoming complementary to today's MO jukeboxes. Jukebox manufacturers like Plasmon already have thin servers for attaching jukeboxes directly to a network, and companies such as Sydney-based Intercept Information Solutions are in the processing of adopting the architecture.

THE FUTURE

The main players in the industry, Plasmon, HP and Sony, are committed to a plan that will increase the capacity of 5.25 inch MO drives until at least the end of 2000.

In the middle of next year, Sony plans to release a 14x drive, which will offer 9.1GB and will feature read/write capacities for present 8x drives. HP has a road map in place for MO until 2002 and sees a strong market for MO for sometime yet. By this time next year it will have a drive that will offer 14x capabilities and a jukebox offering 2.1TB.

Mr MacDonald said with the new 14x drives, there will be a system in which a fixed laser is focused on the hard drive disk surface through a system of mirrors which is believed to be far more precise than traditional MO heads.

He said the improving technologies might deliver four to five times the storage density of MO (8x or 14x).

"Authorities in the field predict 20GB near-field disks and drives will be beta-tested this year," he added.