Penn State's Digital Library Infrastructure unit and HP are collaborating to test the use of the eXtensible Access Method interface standard for mass data storage. (Thanks to ResourceShelf.)
Here's an excerpt from "Penn State Launches Digital Library Archive Initiative with HP":
[Mark] Saussure and his team have recently been collaborating with HP to test digital tools that can be used across all of Penn State's many repository platforms. Primary among these tools is eXtensible Access Method (XAM), a new interface standard created by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) that is expected to help the University cohesively manage and provide access to its diverse digital library collections, electronic record archives, e-science and e-research data repositories.
"We're talking about hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of information from many sources,” said Saussure. XAM is the digital glue that brings all these data repositories together.
As part of its collaboration with HP, Penn State aims to develop a "tiered" electronic storage architecture to meet data discovery, corporate governance and regulatory compliance requirements for many years to come. The approach is part of the SNIA initiative to seek innovative applications for XAM through the efforts of global companies such as HP, EMC and Sun Microsystems. The initiative encourages universities, businesses and institutions to collaborate with one another to use the power of XAM to better manage the exploding demand for online storage.
Read more about it at "XAM and Penn State's Use of HP's Integrated Archive Platform."