The Quiet Revolution

Whether you realize it or not, there's a quiet revolution under way in information management technology. Now, I know we've all become pretty skeptical when we hear the term "revolution," particularly those of us who are veterans of some of the previous "revolutionary" wars. But bear with me for a moment--this one's for real. I'm talking about CD-Recordable technology, generally referred to as CD-R. I believe this technology has the potential to so profoundly change the ways we manage digital information, that the "R" in CD-R may eventually stand for "Revolution" instead of "Recordable.

As our lives push ever onward into the digital world, we're surrounded by myriad means to manage those binary digits (or bits, as some wag in IBM coined the term decades ago). First it was nine-track tapes, then floppy disks (IBM did that, too), then came hard disks, and finally optical discs. All of these technologies had a single purpose: to store a collection of 1's and 0's after the computer was turned off. With a little luck, most of those little bits could even be retrieved later on. Amazing! But all of these technologies had one other interesting characteristic. They all had generally accepted standards, either official of de facto, that allowed their application and use to proliferate.

Indeed, the standards associated with CD-Recordable technology are among the oldest and most widespread in the world, thanks to the CD Audio revolution (there's that word again!).

Let's examine the term "revolution" for a moment. Obviously it applies to CD-R , since the little buggers are designed to go round and round (sorry, I couldn't resist it any longer). Taking a different tack, Webster defines a revolution as a "radical change." Let me take you back a few years to a SIGCAT meeting in 1989 where one of the first self-contained CD-R systems was demonstrated by the Meridian Data Corporation before an overflowing audience in the USGS auditorium. As we all held our breath, a blank disc inserted into the washing machine-sized equipment and the start button was pressed. In a few minutes, out came a shiny gold disc with twenty megabytes or so of freshly-written data on it which, to everyone's amazement, could actually be read in a standard CD-ROM drive. The cost of all of the equipment: a little over $100,000! The means to do what we did on that stage over seven years ago today can be bought for $500. That's about 200 times (or more than two orders of magnitude less, for those with a scientific bent) less expensive. Most would agree, that's a radical change. Most have agreed, CD-R is a revolution.

Not only have the costs associated with CD-R fallen dramatically, but the underlying technology has gone through at least three generations of improvements. We're now to the point where the washing machine has shrunk to the size of a box of detergent, the reliability has gone up significantly, and the user learning curve has literally been reduced from days to minutes. You'd be hard-pressed to find another technology in any industry that has advanced so rapidly in so short a time while plummeting in price And, to put a little icing on the cake, the whole phenomenon is steeped in standards. These standards allow CD-R discs to be easily and inexpensively created and, equally as important, be read on any of the half a billion CD-ROM drives predicted to be in place around the world by the turn of the century.

So what does the "CD-Revolution" portend for all of us in the bit business? First of all, it provides a means to step outside of the box and re-think some of the traditional ways of moving data around. For example, say you're an organization leasing a high-speed communications line to transfer several hundred megabytes of data every night to your field office. CD-R now affords you the option to instead burn a disc at the close of the business day, pop it into an overnight package, and have it at your field office when they wake up the next morning. Gone are the worries about lines errors and running out of disk space on the receiving end. The CD-R disc comes with its own space and thus provides its own backup. And, unlike magnetic tape backup, a CD-R disc is a random access device, allowing quick location and recovery of any particular file.

Applications of CD-R to daily-generated "transactional" data is cropping up in a business environment that is traditionally very conservative when it comes to applying new technology--the banking industry. A growing number of large financial institutions are using CD-R to move thousands of images of canceled checks to their branch offices on a daily basis. Hundreds of individual CD-R discs are created and distributed by these banks every day, eliminating the need for expensive communications lines which would be required to put those check images online. In many cases, the CD-R discs are replacing the bulky and aging microfiche systems that served up these check images for many years.

Another application area that is being fueled by the CD-R revolution is the transition of Computer Output to Laser Disc or COLD systems from proprietary 12 and 5 1/4 inch optical storage media to the ISO 9660 standardized format of CD-R. Not only does this provide vendor independence and long term accessibility (a vendor going out of business can no longer jeopardize your archived files), but also it allows the standardized CD-R discs to be read in simple, inexpensive CD-ROM drives of the type that's probably already installed in your computer. In addition, that CD-R disc containing the equivalent information of thousands of pages of computer printout can now be placed on a local area network (LAN) CD-ROM server and immediately accessed by everyone on that LAN.

The entire organization now can "see" the information contained on those printouts, not just the one poor devil pouring over an unwieldy stack of paper. Also, since the information is now digital, it can be searched and manipulated using very powerful software tools.

But it doesn't stop there. Organizations are now routinely serving CD-R discs to the Internet. Burning your Web pages into an immutable plastic disc and then serving them up from a fast CD-ROM drive (12X drives are here; 16X is right around the corner) is proving to be an ideal solution to the problem of net hackers. Using CD-R in this fashion also provides an inherent audit trail. One organization I've heard of has its CIO each morning literally sign off on the label of the CD-R disc containing the Web pages to be served that day. Now that's control!

Other CD-R applications included such things as: network backup; individual workstation backup; data preservation; on-demand publication; electronic presentation; and in-house CBT production. The list goes on and on. One of SIGCAT `s primary goals over the years has been to track the emergence of CD-R technology and provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of its growing number of applications. In keeping with this goal, the November SIGCAT Regional Meeting will be focusing on the latest developments in the CD-R revolution. Please examine the agenda below to see what I mean.

Meeting Program

After lunch, Sam Bhaktul of Jodian Systems will describe some unique applications for the Federal government. His company provides a unique solution for the storage and retrieval of very high resolution images. Another leader in network recording, Smart Storage, will be represented by Kirti Vahsee, who will describe his company's innovative solution to network recording.

We will conclude our meeting with a question and answer session in which speakers from throughout the day will respond to questions from the audience. Take advantage of the technical experts who will be present to address any issues or concerns you may have faced in using CD recordable technology.

Exhibits will be open throughout the day, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. During our lunch break (11:30 a.m to 1:30 p.m.), you will have two hours to visit the exhibits and enjoy lunch at one of several restaurants located near the meeting. We hope to see you on November 13.

The Information Revolution Based on CD Recording

9:15 - 9:45
What is CD-R? Standards and Formats
David Lind
C Cubed Corporation

9:45 a.m - 10:15 a.m.
Living Dangerously: A Live Demonstration of CD Recording
Al Foster, Vice President
dataDisc

10:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Break

10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Hardware and Software Compatibility Issues
Dhaval Joshi and Richard Medina, Senior Technical Analysts
Doculabs, Inc.

11:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Quality Control: Disc Testing and Evaluation
Scott Gerger, Vice President
Audio Development, Inc.

11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Lunch and Exhibits

1:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Federal Applications in CD Recording
Sam Bhaktul, President
Jodian Systems and Software, Inc.

2:00 - 2:30
Network Recording Applications
Kirti Vashee, Vice President Business Development
Smart Storage, Inc.

2:30 - 2:45
Break and Exhibits

2:45 - 3:15
Q&A Session
A Panel of Experts Answers Your Questions on CD Recording

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John Graves