SONY Sony Group Corporation

Many companies have little idea where their data will be in 100 years. Sony Corp. is betting it will be stored on optical discs.

The Japanese company on Tuesday unveiled a massive, jukebox-like system called Everspan that is designed to store, fetch and read high-capacity discs that are descendants of CDs and DVDs. Sony said it would offer a 100-year guarantee on the disc media.

Sony is one of many companies trying to develop long-term storage technology. Panasonic Corp., for example, in January introduced an archival system based on optical discs that are expected to be compatible with Sony's.

The two longtime rivals and others are trying to address needs of companies that expect to retain data for a very long time. They face worries current storage options—primarily tape drives—will at some point stop reliably retaining data, or that hardware to read aging storage formats will become unavailable.

Yet another fear is that companies will have to keep spending to transfer old information as new storage media become available. With Everspan, "they will never have to migrate or remaster the data," said Frank Frankovsky, who is spearheading the effort as chief executive of Sony Optical Inc.

Mr. Frankovsky is better known in Silicon Valley for having led Facebook Inc.'s hardware design and supply-chain operations as well as the Open Compute Project, a multicompany effort that promotes open-source designs for Web-style computer servers and network switches. He joined Sony in 2015 after Sony bought a startup he formed, Optical Archive Inc.

Many companies today use tape-cartridge systems for long-term data storage, an approach that backers say has advantages such as the large capacity of each cartridge. But discs have their own selling points, including the ability to retrieve a particular piece of data without needing to rewind or fast-forward.

Where conventional CD-Rs and DVD-Rs record data on organic materials that can degrade over decades, the new archival discs are based on inorganic materials that are expected to retain data longer. They also have higher capacity than the highest-capacity conventional discs, Blu-ray, which typically store about 50 gigabytes of data. Sony's initial models store 300 gigabytes, while Panasonic is starting with 100 gigabyte discs.

Millenniata Inc., a Utah-based startup, has been offering discs that work with Blu-ray devices based on an inorganic material that it says can store data for 1,000 years. It offers capacities up to 100 gigabytes.

Sony's ulterior motive is to sell hardware, which includes a robotic system that shuttles behind refrigerator-size cabinets to retrieve trays full of discs. Everspan uses up to 64 drives to read data at extremely high speed, Mr. Frankovsky said.

While tape-drive storage systems generally house drives and cartridges in separate facilities, Everspan places discs and readers alongside companies' server systems, shortening the time to retrieve archived data. Power consumption is extremely low, Mr. Frankovsky said. An air filtration system to reduce dust buildup draws most of the power.

Potential customers evaluating the system, which is expected to be generally available in July, include Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mr. Frankovsky said. The company isn't disclosing pricing, since such system sales are typically negotiated individually, he said.

Mr. Frankovsky's former employer, Facebook, in January said it helped Panasonic develop its storage system and expected to deploy it. He attributed that choice largely to Sony's decision to delay shipping its system to add key features, hinting that Facebook may eventually use hardware for both companies.

"The fact that customers immediately have a choice between two optical storage suppliers is great for the industry," he said.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 08, 2016 09:35 ET (14:35 GMT)

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