Posted by Rob McIntosh on 11/12/2013 to
General
Believe it or not, data migration specialists and archivists are once again extolling the virtues of tape! How can this be? “Tape is dead,” we hear, “it's yesterday's news!” Quite the contrary. The data tape market is growing at a rate of 20% per year and rising, stored data is growing at a rate of 50% a year and IT budgets are growing at a rate of only 2-3% each year. These factors have contributed to the resurgence of LTO tape, which offers data protection at a low cost (15 times lower than spinning disks) and energy control, regulations compliance, long term retention, high capacity, fast streams, and lower error rate than disk. With the introduction of the LTFS (linear tape file system), LTO becomes even more appealing as data can be transferred from the tape in file form.
Companies are again turning to tape in order to increase their return on investment and contain costs without sacrificing quality. Tape is looking progressively better with age, especially with the recent improvements that it has seen. According to Tiogo Partners International, up to 40 percent of file data stored on disk is practically never accessed. The essential problem that many companies face is that they’re still paying for disk space used by data that should be archived. Not only are these companies paying too much for data that isn’t accessed, they’re also forced to purchase additional storage for more important and frequently accessed data.
Another reason for the reinvigorated interest in tape solutions is that the current economy favors less expensive tape storage to costly disk space. Tape is less expensive to own and operate, which makes it a valuable and viable option for businesses of all types. Furthermore, companies that use tape as a data migration or backup solution see no decrease in quality, speed, or failure rates, and no increase in environmental costs when compared to disk solutions. In fact, many see increases in all of these categories when they use tape for either primary or secondary storage.
The use of tape for data migration and backup needs and is rapidly increasing in the fields of healthcare, finance, broadcast and entertainment, video, government, and cloud storage, both for compliance and for operational purposes. To learn more about the benefits of implementing tape solutions, contact our experts at Tape Services, Inc. today!
Companies are again turning to tape in order to increase their return on investment and contain costs without sacrificing quality. Tape is looking progressively better with age, especially with the recent improvements that it has seen. According to Tiogo Partners International, up to 40 percent of file data stored on disk is practically never accessed. The essential problem that many companies face is that they’re still paying for disk space used by data that should be archived. Not only are these companies paying too much for data that isn’t accessed, they’re also forced to purchase additional storage for more important and frequently accessed data.
Another reason for the reinvigorated interest in tape solutions is that the current economy favors less expensive tape storage to costly disk space. Tape is less expensive to own and operate, which makes it a valuable and viable option for businesses of all types. Furthermore, companies that use tape as a data migration or backup solution see no decrease in quality, speed, or failure rates, and no increase in environmental costs when compared to disk solutions. In fact, many see increases in all of these categories when they use tape for either primary or secondary storage.
The use of tape for data migration and backup needs and is rapidly increasing in the fields of healthcare, finance, broadcast and entertainment, video, government, and cloud storage, both for compliance and for operational purposes. To learn more about the benefits of implementing tape solutions, contact our experts at Tape Services, Inc. today!