Company Spotlight:
InPhase Technologies
In the storage sector, InPhase Technologies, which was founded in December 2000 as a spinout of research done at Bell Labs, expects to become one of the first companies to bring holographic data storage to market. The company introduced a prototype of a holographic storage drive earlier this year.

In the deal recently announced, Bayer MaterialScience has agreed to a joint development deal with InPhase. Bayer MaterialScience, which is part of German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer, will invest $5 million in the startup. The two companies say that by 2006 they will introduce both a recording and reading device and a holographic data-storage medium, based on polymers made by Bayer MaterialScience, with a capacity of 300 gigabytes. Bayer MaterialScience is one of the world's largest producers of polymers, including materials used in CDs and DVDs.