What Does Computer Output to Laser Disk (COLD) Mean?
Computer output to laser disk (COLD) was used to capture, store and retrieve large amounts of data such as loan records, accounting reports, shipping documents, inventories, customer bills and general business records.
COLD allowed for the storing of these records on multiple optical disks in a compressed yet easily retrievable format. It was meant to replace paper creations of these documents. The system is composed of both software and hardware.
The COLD management software allows documents to be sent to the system, much like printing, then it is organized for ease of access, compressed and stored.
The hardware consists of optical disk drives mounted on a unit referred to as a jukebox. COLD systems allow for automatically archiving documents at a scheduled date and time. It can also index documents in many different ways and periodically distribute the indexes. Newer technologies have rendered COLD systems obsolete now, in particular solid-state data storage systems (SSDS).
This term is also known as enterprise report management (ERM).
