In 10 years time, CDs, DVDs and similar optical media like BluRay will be obsolete and be replaced by flash drives. Many of today's notebook for example is already being made without a CD/DVD drives. So what do you do if you still need to use a CD or DVD? Simple, you use a virtual CD/DVD software like MagicDisc.
MagicDisc works by creating a virtual CD/DVD drive on your computer from supported CD/DVD images like ISO,NRG,MDF,VCD and many more. To use MagicDisc, first you have to convert your CD/DVD to an image file using application such as IMGBurn (a powerful and free disc burner). After the image is created you can mount the image into a virtual CD drive on your Windows computer using MagicDisc. This is especially useful when your computer doesn't have a CD/DVD drive or when they're broken. Also some computer games requires the DVD to be present in the drive to run. Here you can use MagicDisc to mount the image file and play the game without having to insert any DVDs.
MagicDisc is a freeware for Windows 98 to Windows 7 available from here.