Month: July 2016
Media Duplication: How to Determine Your Needs
Thousands of business organisations and enterprises both from the public and private sectors use CDs and DVDs as the primary means to distribute important content, and with good reason: CDs and DVDs are inexpensive to produce and user-friendly for even the least tech-savvy viewers and listeners — whether they’re at home, in the car or at the office.
The most common uses for media duplication include: music, movies, software, video games, reports, sales presentations.
In the past, CD or DVD duplication and printing was a long, tedious process. Each disc required special attention to burn, print and apply sticky labels, one at a time. Now, this process can be automated – CD and DVD publishers take the stress out of the duplication process, allowing you to start the job and continue going about your daily business while the machine does the work for you.
So, now that you know the basics and your company is ready to automate its media duplication process, here are a few things to consider while narrowing down your options.
The first thing you must know is the quantity of discs you will need to produce at one time. There are duplicators that are great for larger quantities, where multiple discs are duplicated simultaneously. Some fully automated CD and DVD publishing devices hold 20 to 100 discs at a time. These tools not only duplicate the content, but also print onto the discs. Because disc publishers come in various models and capacities, it is vital to understand your quantity needs in order to determine what type of machine will best fit your requirements.
Another important factor that should be taken into consideration is speed. It is essential to identify the timeframes of the duplication project. The target quantity of duplicated discs will definitely influence the deadlines of the particular project, but there are always ways to achieve fast duplication within limited timeframes – it all depends on duplication tools production capacities.
The next thing that should be taken into account is disc itself, especially its printable surface. This is something that’s something really important when it comes to professional media duplication: at the end of the day, printable surfaces are the ones that ultimately sell the end product. Optical media devices such as blank CDs and DVDs may have excellent technical benchmark testing results, but if the printable surface is of poor quality, they become literally useless pieces of pressed polycarbonate that are completely unsuitable for professional media duplication industry.
Dr. Sean Farnan, Head of FTI’s Research and Development Department commented: ‘The challenges of today’s B2B digitised data industry, demands speeds, reliability and data longevity. Duplication and Replication equipment is costly. It has to run with high yield and minimum supervision to give the best return of investment to the business, while delivering the best value for money, for the business customer. The role and the choice of optical media is crucial in delivering these business objectives. Using a cheap, sub-standard optical media product is clearly a false economy and the decision to use such products to increase margin can seriously undermine the reputation of a data processing business. The optical media MUST deliver quality to the end-user.”
FalconMEDIA Dupli Line has been specially designed to suit professional media duplication needs. It was tested by ALL the major drive makers to ensure full compatibility across the range of duplication and replication systems.This product line has three essential features that makes it a perfect choice for your media duplication projects:
- Excellent benchmark test results and 100% reliable media (proven by number of in-house and independent tests
- Low cost, yet high quality grade
- Wide range of premium printable surfaces
For over a decade, Falcon Technologies International LLC prioritised its Research and Development efforts on printable surfaces and managed to implement high-tech solutions into its production process. FTI’s wide range of printable layers are designed to meet any professional media duplication industry requirements according to highest standards.
Alternative Data Storage Solutions: are HDDs and Cloud-based Backups the Only Ones Out There?
Data storage and backups are becoming a more important, even essential, part of operations for virtually all businesses. Third-party, cloud-based storage solutions have become very popular in recent years with many industries that operate with large volumes of data, such as sound, video and graphics. But are these solutions so secure and trusted as they are marketed to be?
Thomas Coughlin, a data storage consultant, says that two of the biggest issues for most media and entertainment companies with third-party archiving is cost and trust. When it comes to a handling of archives above a certain size, it becomes more cost-efficient to have supporting proprietary storage infrastructure in-house, rather than continue leasing it from a third party.
The issue of trust in relating to data archiving is being solved using various encryption methods, but according to Coughlin there are still many unanswered questions on long-term data security.
The other significant factor that influences companies towards proprietary data storage solutions is cost: according to the latest case study on Facebook, having data stored on optical media or magnetic tape is up to 80% cheaper than having it stored on HDD or SSD-based storages.
For enterprises that need to store large amounts of data that is rarely accessed, it is more important to effectively manage costs rather than getting faster performance of the storage solutions (e.g. banks, insurance companies, healthcare organisations, Governmental agencies, etc.). This is the main reason why more secure storage technologies based on optical media or magnetic tapes are more likely to be used by certain industries, Coughlin says.
Lower costs become a meaningful factor due to the difference in technology behind various types of storage systems. Optical discs and magnetic tapes do not require any electrical power when data is not accessed.
Falcon Technologies International LLC (FTI) has invested a significant portion of its resources into archival solutions development. Over a decade of continuous Research and Development, FTI achieved excellent expertise in the optical media production industry and proved its operational excellence through a number of quality certificates, such as ISO:9001 and CE.
The company firmly believes that Optical Media will re-define long-term data storage and archiving through the provision of reliable and high-quality tools, such as FTI’s latest optical disc product line Century Archival.
Century Archival discs were specially designed for long-term data storage and exceeded experts’ expectations in a number of accelerated aging tests, showing a minimum lifespan of 300 years when subject to extreme environmental conditions. Gold and Platinum layers of Century Archival ensure that all the stored data will be secured against any external environmental threats (fact proved with series of ISO/OEM Archival Tests).
Dr. Sean Farnan, Head of FTI’s Research and Development Department said: “With the exponential growth of digital data, how we handle data is becoming increasingly important. From the instant gratification to placing a picture onto an online service such as Facebook, memories from a family wedding, business accounts, medical details through to the digital reproduction of ancient manuscripts the list is long and varied. As this journey into the digital landscape continues, the importance of storing digital data over a long period of time is now a real concern. It is also an opportunity for Optical Media to deliver a long lasting, cost effective archival solution.
By using the purest materials and employing rigorous quality control during the manufacturing process, it is possible to produce high capacity optical disks that will last over 100 years and beyond. The data storage works across all formats and is easily scalable depending on the end users’ application.
From learned institutions preserving human history, to online entertainment, healthcare and the business sector, the need for permanent data storage will be met by optical media. It will also allow you to share memories such as your wedding day with your grand children. Memories are always better when shared.”
Healthcare Information Technology Market is Expected to Grow
A recent industry report’s findings confirmed the projected growth of the global Radiology Information System (RIS) market and estimated it to reach a value of $980.2 million by 2024. A large segment of major scientific findings and technological advancements go hand-in-hand with the continuously growing demand for Healthcare InformationTechnology (HIT), which makes it one of the key driving forces of the market growth.
The in-depth research report on Global RIS (Radiology Information System) Market with detailed charts and figures is available HERE.
Healthcare Information Technology is based on several major pillars, one of them being Electronic Medical Records (EMR). It is considered to be one of the most important HIT’s subsystems, that stores, processes and analyses medical data of patients. With the emergence of Radiology Information System (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) the entire Healthcare industry has been taken to the next level. Text-based patient records are now backed up by radiology images, that may be stored safely for decades without any risk of being damaged or lost.
Next generation Healthcare Informational Systems that are being implemented globally to ensure higher business security and patient confidentiality. RIS and PACS are recognised as most efficient systems of electronic imaging management and are gaining popularity in developing economies such as China and India, where the populations are so big that healthcare sector has no other choice but to implement them.
Falcon Technologies International LLC focuses its Research and Development efforts on niche segments of optical media such as HIT and has developed a special product line that meets the sector’s requirements.
FalconMEDIA MEDILINE is an ideal solution for providing the patients with imaging reports, radiology and treatment history. With its use, distribution of medical reports to the patients becomes more cost-efficient and easy task.
All FalconMEDIA MEDILINE products are fully compatible with Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standards.
What makes Optical Media better in Data Archiving?
Paper hard copies and handwritten memorandums are gradually being replaced by digital file storage solutions used by corporations to archive all important information. Data storage and regular back up became a significant task for all sorts of private and public business enterprises, many of whom would simply store the data on internal back up servers with redundant array of independent disks (RAID) or on Cloud-based solutions, however these kind of “hot” backup solutions are not suitable for long-term data storage.
“Hot” backup is a data copy that is accessed relatively often, usually stored on hard drives and flash-memory devices. These data storage devices contain many electronic components, and therefore have a very limited lifespan. Another point to consider is that data on these devices may be easily modified, which makes them not ideal solutions from a security point of view. Long term data archiving requires both security and durability criteria to be met.
“Cold” backup methods, such as optical media and cassette tapes, allow storage of big data volumes for a long periods of time. It is called “cold” because the data that is stored with this method is usually not accessed very often and it cannot be modified. Once a file is recorded on a Read Only disc it remains unchanged, which is perfect for historical data archiving.
In 2005 Japanese Government approved Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS Z 6017), that require corporations to preserve digital data for a minimum of 10 years. The regulations included official recommendations to use optical media as a main choice of storage solution. With the release of a new format optical disc, storage capacity of one unit grew up to 100GB, which is another driving force behind this media becoming a reliable and low-cost backup solution.
Optical disc and drive technology has developed quickly in lifespan and storage capacity dimensions over the last decade. Pioneer introduced a brand new disc drive (BDR-PR1M series) that supports large capacity disc writing and additional error correction layers to minimize writing errors and improve disc quality. A wide range of industry players have already presented 50 /100GB storage capacity discs to the market some of which may last for up to 1000 years!