Archiving Made simple, affordable and secure.

Fixed content has many forms, such as critical business, legal, and reference documents; X-rays; e-mail attachments; check images; broadcast content; and satellite imagery; among many others. Unlike databases or files, which change and are updated constantly, the value of fixed content stems from the combined attributes of authenticity, long life, and accessibility. Existing storage architectures are not optimized for this new combination of requirements.

Once relegated to storage archives or file cabinets, fixed content is being driven online, fueled by regulatory requirements, digitization across virtually all industries, and the desire to leverage this content into new services and revenue streams. Just as the growth of applications such as computer-aided design (CAD) and the explosion of the Web drove the emergence of NAS to share file-based information, the need to manage and access large quantities of fixed content has given rise to a new category of networked storage—content-addressed storage (CAS).

Content-addressed storage offers is perfectly suited to the needs of fixed content. Content addressing eliminates the need for applications to understand and manage the physical location of information on storage media. Instead, addresses are calculated based on the content itself, and serve as a unique claim check that applications can use to find and retrieve stored objects. This claim check not only simplifies the task of managing huge numbers of objects, but is also in fact a digital fingerprint of the content, ensuring absolute authenticity.

EMC Centera Archiving made simple.

EMC® Centera® is an IP network storage system specifically designed to store and provide fast, easy access to fixed content. It is the first solution to offer online availability with long-term retention and assured integrity for this fastest-growing category of information. Whether integrated with an in-house-developed application or an application from a continually growing group of industry-focused EMC partners, EMC Centera is the optimal information archive for businesses and organizations that require a simplified solution to expanding amounts of fixed content. EMC Centera greatly simplifies the task of managing, sharing, and protecting all sizes of content repositories. It cost-effectively puts information online in support of new sources of revenue generation, expanded business models, and increased service levels to users and customers. EMC Centera features WORM (write once, read many) attributes of non-rewriteability and non-eraseability with disk performance and TCO (total cost of ownership) superior to current archiving approaches.