ProTeM aims to capitalise on this opportunity for emerging technologies by developing probe storage micro-nano techniques and systems for very high-density mass storage in a small size and with high performance. The primary objective is to develop and exploit the necessary research and technology to address the needs of the important data storage domain of digital archiving (initially for large-scale administrations, financial institutions, health systems, etc., but also with potential future interest for smaller-scale archiving for perhaps accounting and legal departments, engineering and design offices, publishing houses etc., even maybe for personal digital archives).

The professional data storage market (archival and backup) is a strong one in Europe , with key internationally-leading industrial players (notably Plasmon and Tandberg, but with a host of specialist players - Xendata, Xyratex, O-Mass, HiStor, M5Data..) based here for both research/development and manufacturing activities. It is therefore a mass storage area in which the EU can and should compete globally in terms of both intellectual property and EU-based manufacturing. For archival applications reliability, data integrity and media longevity (in both write-once read-many (WORM) and re-writable (R/W) formats) feature much more prominently than in other storage sectors and professional archiving addresses different cost/performance requirements compared to standard consumer applications. ProTeM aims to meet all these archival requirements (density, capacity, data rate, longevity..) through innovative probe-storage solutions.

Although our primary objective is the research and development of the science and technology of small, low-power yet ultra-high capacity archival probe-storage systems, it is most likely that the solutions we develop will have significant applications in other important data storage sectors. If sufficiently high data rates can be achieved then we should also be able to address the backup market. Ultra-high capacity low-power mass storage systems would also be very attractive for several high-technology sectors (e.g. aeronautical, transport, nuclear, space.) - again areas in which the EU is strong enough to compete globally and should remain so. ProTeM's research of new WORM and R/W probe storage techniques will also undoubtedly benefit the mass-market area of the storage of multimedia content and storage for mobile applications - an activity likely to be of large-scale commercial benefit for consumer electronics, even if mass-market economics often dictate manufacturing outside of the EU and in the 'developing world'.

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