Users need to start evaluating their options regarding storage of fixed content data now that analysts have predicted it will consume more than half of a corporations storage resources by 2005. Fixed content storage consists of data such as digital images, e-mail messages, presentations, video content, medical images and check images that don't change over time. Unlike transaction-based data, whose usefulness is short, fixed content data must be kept for long periods of time, often to comply with retention periods and provisions that government regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 have specified. Analyst firms such as The Yankee Group say that the market for fixed content data will grow from 308,000 terabytes this year to 1,251,900 terabytes in 2006. Enterprise Storage Group says that fixed content reference information will represent 54% of all data by 2005 and will grow faster than that of traditional transaction-based and file-oriented storage. While fixed content storage consists of a variety of data that must be referenced and addressed, it's a huge market nonetheless, which requires some unique capabilities to store it and differentiate it from short-lived transaction-based data.
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