Originating Author: Dave Vellante

Major Contributor: John McArthur

Maybe the question should be is tape innovation dead? Not necessarily innovation in tape technology, that's clearly alive and well with things like encryption being combined with tape. Rather are tape vendors going to find new applications as technologies like data deduplication encroach on the traditional backup and restore business.

With the acquisition of StorageTek by Sun Microsystems, an historic enterprise tape company disappeared. StorageTek took on IBM, when IBM boasted 50% of the revenue for the computer industry and 2/3rds of its profits. StorageTek was known for its gambles, many of which failed miserably. The company attempted to develop a plug compatible 43XX small mainframe, as well as commercialize optical storage in the data center, both huge flops that led up to the company's Chapter 11 filing. The Iceberg log structured file system was supposed to revolutionize the DASD (Direct Access Storage Device) business for IBM-compatible machines. Though the product never performed well in on-line, update-intensive applications, many companies never would have made it through mainframe Y2K testing without its unique-for-the-time snapshot feature. As well, the concept paved the way for an array of fixed block devices supporting IBM track formats, a business that was eventually popularized by EMC's Symmetrix.

STK was clearly an innovator and what set STK apart were its profitable tape innovations. StorageTek popularized the automated tape library, a robot silo that very few thought would succeed to the degree it did. This bold move saved the company as STK found new applications for tape. Tape was never seen as an innovative market, but STK proved the exception to that rule. Popular sentiment may have it that with the Sun acquisition, tape has seen its last hurrah, especially as Sun is not investing as aggressively as STK in STK's boom times. The fact is that, the tape business unit received little development funds in the last years of StorageTek. Sun has, to a degree reinvested in the business unit and signaled the company's long-term commitment to tape with the appointment of Jon Benson, to run Sun's storage business. Jon previously ran tape development for StorageTek, and then Sun. Nonetheless, questions remain as the integration of STK and Sun naturally rationalizes certain activities and resources including SE's and tape-specific marketing investments.

Sun is not the only company to understand and appreciate the role of tape, though Nigel Dessau, who heads up marketing for storage at Sun is often heard to say, "How would you like a storage system that can store your data for seven years with no power and no cooling costs?" That's tape. HP and IBM also understand the revenue and profit opportunity in tape, which is why both companies have invested so heavily in LTO.

No sane person would predict a resurgence in tape adoption, and tape is certainly being replaced in a variety of data-protection, data-sharing, and data-distribution functions. That said, the notion that tape is dead ignores the substantial evidence that tape, as a removable medium will have a place in a variety of compliance, fixed archiving and offline archiving markets.

The question is, which vendor is going to stand up and take the lead?

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