To some audiences, using tape might seem like an old-fashioned approach to storing data, a strategy better suited to decades past instead of what some commentators have termed the ‘Zettabyte Era’.
It could also be that the focus on cloud-based data storage solutions and services has pushed tape technology away from the spotlight. A modern tape system is an extraordinary engineering achievement, but equally, its days of being the poster child for cutting edge IT are over. Although I work in the tape industry, I would be the first to acknowledge that the arrival of a new HPE StoreEver LTO solution won’t grab the same kind of headlines as the latest innovation in Artificial Intelligence.
Join Me For A Series Exploring The Value of Tape
My objective for this series of articles is to try to explain the reasons for the ongoing value of LTO tape; what we at HPE StoreEver describe as “lasting innovation”. That means ‘lasting’ in terms of tape technology’s long term durability and undoubted market success, and ‘innovation’ reflecting all the ways that tape has reinvented itself as storage needs and data protection challenges evolve.
In the next instalment, I’m going to be looking at the technical advances that have been made to deliver the ninth generation of the LTO format, and what this means for the future of data protection in the coming decade.
Then, in subsequent episodes, I’ll be looking at:
- the economic benefits of tape for long term storage and archiving
- how LTO Ultrium technology can help businesses tackle the modern nemesis of ransomware
- tape’s environmental credentials
- the incredible reliability of modern tape storage
And I’ll finish the series with an overview and some personal observations on the future of tape and its role in backup and archival storage between now and 2030.
So make sure to follow me to for the entire series covering the value of HPE StoreEver LTO tape technology in the Zettabyte Era. I’ll be publishing the next article on Monday 16th May and continuing bi-weekly into the summer.
But that’s it for today’s introduction. Thank you for reading!