Recent legislation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), is forcing companies to retain information at a much faster rate and in vastly greater amounts for much longer than ever before. In addition, that information must be more readily accessible, making tape less practical.

    These requirements are forcing IT organizations to rethink their storage strategies. No longer can companies think of meeting their escalating storage needs only in terms of tape or undifferentiated disk. Tape does not meet performance or reliability requirements, and brings with it onerous management and IT staffing issues. Fast, reliable disk, on the other hand, may be too expensive to meet all compliance requirements.