Storage faces tough future

In three years, the bytes of data generated by businesses IT systems and devices, as well as digital cameras and mobile phones, will equal the number of grains of sand on the world's beaches, according to analyst house IDC, reports ARN Net.

This estimation reflects the increase of devices and systems used by businesses and consumers.

Over the next few years, corporations will face tough decisions on how to store data, find information and comply with regulations.

NEC has launched the NEC HYDRAstor HS-Series grid storage system, giving scalability, management, self-evolving capability and safe de-duplication for archive and backup, at a lower total cost of ownership than established solutions, says eChannel Line.

It is based on the industry's first unified disk storage platform optimised for managing both backup and archive data.

The HYDRAstor HS8 is the first offering in a series of products from NEC that will set new standards to address the increasing data storage challenges of IT.

Facebook has released an open Data Store API beta programme that may show plans to offer a data storage service to developers, reports PC World.

The Facebook Developer wiki currently includes a page offering users beta access to a data storage service.

The wiki also warns users that the page is still in development and users should make sure that data used in testing the service is properly backed up.