"If you want to go to individual records for restores, you don't want to have to go to tape. We're nearline accessible," Koclanes said.

Brian Zucker, technology strategist in the office of the chief technology officer at Dell, said his company chose to side with the Blu-ray format because of its larger capacity and the fact that it's backed by more vendors.

"In general, we see a need for [Blu-ray optical disks] in the consumer space for high-definition content. The movie play is certainly there," Zucker said. "Then we'll see it as a way to archive data. First in the small office or home office, then eventually in corporations."

Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product development at Pioneer Electronics in Long Beach, Calif., said his company's upcoming product is aimed squarely at the consumer market, where it needs to find adoption before enterprises will ever consider it as a viable long-term storage format.

"I think it's more appealing if it's consumer first and the enterprise second. If it's broadly accepted, then enterprises will have the assurance that it's not a vertical format that will go away," Parsons said.