Dive Brief:

• Tuesday, Sony Corp. introduced a new storage system designed to help companies archive vast amounts of data on optical discs
• The system, called Everspan, is designed to store, fetch and read optical discs with large storage capacities. Everspan is a "massive, jukebox-like system," according to the Wall Street Journal. 
• Users are expected to never need to migrate data because of the durability of the discs, according to Sony. The company is offering a 100-year warranty with the system. 

Dive Insight:

Many companies are concerned that tape drives—the technology most often used for long-term storage today—will degrade over time, or that the hardware used to read the tapes will eventually become obsolete. 

Everspan, which the company will make generally available in July, has an advantage over tape drives as it takes less time to retrieve archived data and has low power consumption, according to Sony. 

Several companies are working to develop viable long-term data storage solutions. Companies like Sony and its Rival Panasonic Corp. are banking on optical discs, the descendants of CDs and DVDs. In January, Panasonic unveiled its own rival archival system, which also employs the discs.