Data Storage Takes Center Stage at Executive Summit, from Larstan Business Reports.

WASHINGTON -- New government mandates combined with growing customer demands are forcing managers to consolidate and streamline computer systems, to enhance data collaboration. As a result, Fixed Content Storage (FCS) is making enormous strides. Companies in every market sector are urgently upgrading their capability to provide secure storage for fixed content data.

The rapid emergence of FCS has given birth to an executive roundtable discussion, hosted by Larstan Business Reports, "Fixed Content Storage: An Urgent and Universal Issue." Scheduled for May 22-23, 2006 at the Omni Chicago Hotel, the discussion will bring together the top strategists in storage technology. To reserve a chair at the table, contact Tony Carlson, Larstan (301-279-2005; [e-mail]). For more information on relevant storage solutions referred to as "CAS," consult a vendor neutral website: www.CasCommunity.org.

The panel discussion also will address groundbreaking, empirical research conducted by Larstan on FCS implementation in the North American B2B market. Following the roundtable, Larstan will publish a comprehensive market impact analysis report.

According to research from the IT consulting firm ESG, digital reference files are growing in volume at an annual rate of 92 percent and now comprise 51 percent of stored corporate data. "These files include documents, videos, scanned images and other unstructured data," says Tony Asaro, senior analyst at ESG. He adds that e-mail also is being archived to CAS platforms.

To be sure, digital reference files are growing in volume and now include documents, videos, scanned images, and other unstructured data. FCS manages these files, providing massive scalability, application awareness, simplified management, and instant access to data for on-line archiving.

Fixed content is an emerging storage architecture that expedites the retrieval of large, fixed-content files - e.g., medical X-rays, bank check images, and rich media video clips. Unlike conventional networked storage that facilitates the file sharing of transaction data, fixed content solutions are designed to store large volumes of fixed content on disk for extended periods of time.

The challenges, and opportunities, are enormous. Yet, most experts agree that a general lack of understanding and strategic direction has, so far, kept FCS solutions from serious, well-informed consideration in many companies.

An array of new compliance and reporting laws is fueling the demand for FCS, notably the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. These laws, combined with an overarching push for reliable archival and retrieval capabilities in an insecure world, are driving rapid innovation in storage. Fixed content must now be stored for long periods in absolute security. This difficult task - improving storage performance, while maintaining security - requires new solutions and ways of thinking. That's why Larstan is assembling its roundtable on Fixed Content Storage: to provide fresh insights from the leading experts in the field.