Sony and Panasonic are teaming up to develop a standard for professional-level optical drives. Ultimately, the duo hopes to release a 300GB optical drive by the end of 2015.

The durable optical disc — dust- and water-proof, resistant to changing temperatures and humidity — is ideal for a long-term storage tool. Sony and Panasonic plan to market the new disc format to businesses looking to store hefty amounts of data for long periods of time.

“Both Sony and Panasonic recognize that optical discs will need to accommodate much larger volumes of storage in years to come given the expected future growth in the archive market,” the companies said in a joint statement(Opens in a new window).

The companies pointed to the growing need for archiving, from video production industries that store motion pictures and broadcasting, to cloud data centers.

“By actively promoting the adoption of a new standard for next-generation high-capacity optical discs, [Sony and Panasonic] intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable data for future generations,” the companies said.

Sony and Panasonic touted their existing breakthroughs in optical drives, including Sony’s file-based optical disc archive system from 2012 and Panasonic’s series of optical disc storage devices, which houses 12 100GB discs for a total storage capacity of 180TB. Both have also contributed to the development of Blu-ray format technologies.