Originating Author: Dave Vellante

Predictions of the death of tape have been forthcoming since tape has been around but for a variety of reasons tape just won't go away. Increasingly, it looks like if it's worth keeping, users should put data on disk. Recent deduplication announcements from the likes of NetApp, IBM and EMC underscore this point as a 'clone everything you ever really might need acess to' strategy is becoming economically feasible.

Tape's uniqueness is it remains removability, so tape vendors are looking at opportunities in offline archiving, as well as fixed content and compliance markets, which according to Horison Information Strategies and Fred Moore are probably more lucrative than traditional backup and restore. But for those customers with mountains of tapes and loads of data that has at least some intrinsic value, using a data deduplication strategy to clone everything on disk is starting to look pretty interesting.

Action Item: Customers should move toward a strategy of using disk for data that at some point will likely be read. Putting data on tape essentially means you'll never get to it again (or at least hope not to have to). Tape should be considered as an offsite medium, used in situations where compliance is the key driver or the economics of tape still make sense.