Long live the tape!

BRISTOL: According to a purchasing intentions survey conducted by TechTarget amongst more than 1,000 CIOs globally in 2004, seventy-nine percent that they were likely to either increase or at least maintain their tape storage spending in 2005, while 48 percent would maintain the status quo and 31 percent opted to spend more on tapes and tape-related storage products. Nothing could have been a more absolute rebuttal of the growing perception that tapes are on the verge of extinction, gradually being replaced by disks as the most convenient form of storage. That tapes continue to rule the roost seems to be the overbearing message that came out of the two-day symposium on storage strategies organized by HP in the sylvan settings of HP Labs at Bristol in UK.






HP UK product marketing manager, tapes division, David Rogers feels that economics of cost, reliability as backup media and easy transportability options are three main parameters where tape scores brownie points over disks. HP UK product marketing manager, Andrew Dickerson added a few more advantages that have emerged in the last 12 months. "For one, because of different disasters not only has there been an increase in awareness about backups, archiving is also becoming vitally important particularly of rich media content. Add to it different compliance requirements especially in North America and EMEA, plus a gradual move towards tape automation products," he opined.





Within the tape family, factory exit reports by IDC and Gartner point out that DDS/DAT continues to hog the lion's share with 46 percent of the market share in H12004. However LTO, another form of near line storage based on open standards developed by a consortium of HP, IBM and Quantum (strengthened with the acquisition of Seagate), is catching up fast, already garnering 16 percent of the market share. While the perennially popular DLT/VS still maintains a 12 percent share, there seems to be very few takers for proprietary technologies like Travan and AIT/VXA, which had merely 10 percent and eight percent market share respectively. In Asia-Pacific, the proportion is even more lop-sided with LTO taking up 57 percent of the market share followed by DDS/DAT and DLT at 24 percent and 15 percent respectively.





No wonder, this unequivocal support for tape drives and media based on open standards has prompted HP to further enhance their portfolio. While in December, the Ultrium 960 LTO drive was launched, February 14 would see two more SDLT and DLT drives being officially released. However, HP is currently flinching from officially releasing the identities of these two new drives. That shows how lucrative the market is currently and consequently how strong the competition is. HP currently leads in both DDS/DAT and LTO domain with 56 percent and 51 percent market share respectively. Even within APAC, HP in H1, 2004 garnered 60 percent of the total $208.45 million tape market. Incidentally within APAC, India seemed to be the leading market with 21 percent market share followed by Australia, China and Korea at 19 percent, 14 percent and 10 percent respectively.





The HP Labs at Bristol set up in 1982 currently houses the R&D center and post-manufacturing testing labs for the various near line storage products. Even the lion's share of the marketing efforts are propelled from Bristol. While earlier it also housed the manufacturing plant, since 2003 this has been outsourced to Hungary.

The author was hosted at Bristol by HP.