New Company Believes in Holographic Data Storage, Yes it Exists!

Akonia Holographics, LLC was launched in August 2012 after closing on an $10.8 million investment round from Acadia Woods Partners, LLC in New York.

This company is like the revival of InPhase Technologies, Inc. which disappeared in 2011.

As part of its investment in Akonia, Acadia Woods – that was one of the investors into InPhase – transferred all of the assets that it had acquired at the auction of InPhase in March 2012, including all of IP and most of its equipment.

All current Akonia’s executives came from InPhase, the three co-founders, CEO Ken Anderson (manager of advanced development and systems engineering at InPhase), CTO Mark Ayres (holographic research engineer at InPhase), and VP materials development Fred Askham (senior Synthetic chemist at InPhase). VP of business development Terry Loseke had the same position at InPhase.

Furthermore, Akonia, with 9 people, has moved into the former office of InPhase in Longmont, CO, according to the Boulder County Business Report.

The start-up in stealth mode will try to achieve an holographic photopolymer media at 6TB, with over $10 million in media manufacturing equipment, with a drive being able to transfer data at 300MB/s and the help of a partner, probably a Japanese company.

akonia_holographics_540

The firm has been assigned a patent (8,311,067) developed by Jason R. Ensher, Lafayette, CO, Paul C. Smith, Louisville, CO, and Ian B. Murray, Erie, CO, for a "system and devices for improving external cavity diode lasers using wavelength and mode sensors and compact optical paths."

Read also:
hVault Presents Advanced Archive Program for Holographic
That includes off-site storage with Hollywood Vaults
New Name in Holographic Storage: hVault
Apparently using assets of dead InPhase
1cm³ Cube Holographic Storage Developed by AON
Density of 1.2TB, with 1 Gbit/s read/rewrite performance
InPhase Filed for Chapter XI
Will holographic storage ever happens?

Comments

Will you bet on this new company founded by former people from InPhase that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2011 after burning $100 million?

If the company can put 6TB on one disc with 300MB/s transfer rate, that's a great capacity for archiving applications, much more that tried InPhase (up to 1.6TB and 120 MB/s on its tapestry product).

But what about the real life expectancy of a media based on organic components?

Akonia Holographics needs urgently several big names as partners to get some standardization for the disc and the drive as well as availability at reasonable prices.

Other companies currently involved in holographic data storage include Access Optical Networks (roadmap at up to 9.6TB and 1,240 MB/s), General Electric (500GB), hVault, and Storex Technologies.