Archiving data to DVD-R?

Has anyone found or developed a good automated solution for archiving data to optical media?

Situation: Client has had VERY bad experiences with Tape solutions and wants to do monthly archives to DVD-R media. The drives and media a cheap enough and they are only archiving 40GB or so. Doing this to CD (which they are doing now with backuptocd.exe) is time consuming to the admin staff and uses ALOT of blank media. This is only for off-site storage and archiving and doesn’t represent their only survival strategy. I am trying to eliminate as much media and user interaction as possible while keeping costs under control.