title: Understanding Storage Intermediaries
creators: Helen Hockx-Yu Don Brower
abstract: Storage intermediaries are software, and sometimes hardware appliances that act as a link between applications and storage media, performing a range of tasks, such as protocol translation, caching, compression or even encryption. This paper describes storage intermediaries and their key functions that librarians and archivists should be aware of, as these introduce technical dependencies that can impact digital preservation.
  
keywords: archival storage storage gateway cloud storage tape storage digital preservation redundancy diversification