Working with these products, which migrate files from your standard magnetic disks to near-line tape and optical drives, takes a great deal of elapsed time and energy. I first started working with ABN-AMRO bank's Treasury and Capital Markets group last fall with this technology. Since that time, the staff at the bank was busy trying out two different products from Avail Systems and Micro Design International. Quite frankly, I was impressed with the level of effort and their professionalism. I've been to about a dozen different sites since my odessey began, and these guys are one of the best gang that I've worked with.
Fewer features is better than more inclusive and complex.
The bank wanted a system that relatively unskilled operators could manipulate, even at the expense of more features. They wanted something with at least 40 gigabytes of storage, that could handle their most demanding users. Easy backup and recovery. Being a bank, they were picky about the ultimate optical and other assorted hardware they wanted to use. Having an HSM product that supported a wide range of hardware was important, so they could choose what optical jukebox and tape drives they wanted.