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To: SC who wrote (5455)	2/12/1999 7:49:00 PM
From: Gus	Respond to of 17679

Steve, I agree with you that KM is a bonus if it should happen. I also share the concern about tape becoming obsolete which is why I regularly check the new technologies coming down the pike to see if anything could surpass tape technology in terms of sheer storage (still the capacity champ) and flexibility (automated tape solutions provide unlimited storage gated only by library and office space). Tape is still faster, cheaper and offers more capacity. The last time I checked ATT, IBM and Optitek (where Al Shugart is a director) were at the forefront to develop holographic storage -- solid state optical storage -- which remains the best bet (DRAM memory is second) to render obsolete not only tape drives, but disk drives and optical drives as well. Jubimer would know more about this, but some of the papers I have read about the various video-on-demand trials since 1993 -- Warner, TCI, Bell Atlantic, Florida, MCI, etc -- all came to the conclusion that holographic storage would be the best storage format for that kind of service because it is solid state storage (read: no moving parts = faster) However, it is widely acknowledged that there is a very difficult materials science that must be mastered before the holographic buckaroos can move to the next commercial level. Strictly as a layman, my impression is that the scientists are still in the process of experimenting with ways to fill the substantial gaps in the materials science -- never mind, for now, building out the production line -- before they can get their system to work on a mass scale. In 1996, for example, I recall checking up on Optitek, which had a commercially available working 100 MB prototype of holographic storage but the darn thing couldn't hold the data for long before the laser writer and reader render the holographic medium unstable. If I understand the process correctly, what may be required is for them to painstakingly build out the science for novel approaches to filling in those gaps. This kind of pioneering stuff is similar to the way that the folks at Ampex went through an intensive process of trial and error which ultimately resulted in Charles Ginsburg, Ray Dolby, and company developing new component technology to get their targeted system design to work (see Ampex web site for a more detailed account of the process of inventing the VCR). That takes time, money, hard work and divine inspiration, IMO. Until then, the most practical template involves pipelining any combination of semiconductor memory, disk drives, optical drives and tape drives in a system that can stream text, video and audio to a private or public network. Right now Genesis, which scales up to a terabyte, seems to be targeted at the fastest growing segment of the enterprise storage market -- the small to medium-sized segment. EMC and Storagetek target the high end segments. As I understand it, the building blocks of Genesis are the Data docks which can hold tape drives (including the most popular 8mm and 1/2 inch formats), disk drives, optical drives, etc so it is reasonable to assume that as the move to storage networking accelerates, Micronet will develop newer products to hit the sweet spot of the market. Gus