The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) has signed an
agreement with Ecma International to work together to finalize an
industry-wide archival-grade optical disc specification.
The purpose of this initiative is to address end user needs calling for established
practices in media archive life testing and classification. The final goal
is the issuance of an ISO standard available to industry for broad
implementation.
Since its formation in Sept. 2005, OSTA's Optical Disc Archival Testing
(ODAT) Committee has worked with a multi-national group of industry experts
to develop a draft specification for an archival standard. The ODAT
Committee is composed of global manufacturers of 120mm optical media and
drives, as well as university and government members. Participating
manufacturers include Fuji, Imation, MAM-A Inc., Maxell, Memorex, Panasonic
(Matsushita Electric), Ricoh, Sony, TDK, Toshiba, and Verbatim. The
committee has also received support from other industry organizations,
including Japan's CDs21 and the Digital Content Association of Japan
(DCAJ), and has held seminars and working sessions in the U.S. and Japan.
Technical editing of the specification is led by Fred Byers of the US
government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
organization.
The ODAT Committee's defined charter is to develop optical media
archival test methodology and promote its implementation. Two working
groups have addressed the technical and business promotion aspects of the
archive test specification. Recently, the technical working group completed
a first Ecma draft of the proposed archival test standard. The project was
unanimously accepted by the Ecma TC31 committee at its recent meeting in
Sapporo, Japan in late June. Further processing will take place under its
charter.
Ecma is the inventor and main practitioner of the concept of "fast
tracking" of specifications drafted in international standards format
through the process in Global Standards Bodies such as the ISO. "Since
1986, when fast tracking was introduced to ISO, over 75 percent of the
total of about 300 fast-tracked standards have been managed through Ecma,"
said Jan van den Beld, Ecma Secretary General.
"Under the OSTA organization, we brought together various independent
groups that were working on similar ideas, in order to reach consensus on
test methodology. Now we are partnering with Ecma in order to leverage
their expertise in the creation of broadly adopted international
standards," said Chris Smith, chairman of OSTA's ODAT Committee, general
manager of Sony Corporation's Data Media Business Development Center in
Boulder, CO, and active member of Ecma TC31 that will develop the
international standard.
"The anticipated end result is increased user awareness of archival
quality of optical media as a critical purchase parameter," explained
Smith. "This will enhance customers' ability to make informed purchases
appropriate to their application needs by providing a standardized
evaluation result indicator. This product differentiation is intended to
eliminate any guesswork that takes place when deciding which media to use
when long life of data is a desirable attribute."