Good old tape

Tape vendors are confident that although the disk market is gaining momentum, tape will remain the most reliable medium of back-up and restoration for most companies. Atanu Kumar Das finds out why they are so optimistic

Quantum is at the forefront of driving tape-based technologies with its SDLT range of tapes Jim Simon Director of Marketing Quantum Asia-Pacific

The tape drive market in the country just doesn't seem to die down. This is primarily because of its cost effectiveness and long-term reliability. If we go by IDC figures, then tape vendors have enough reasons to smile.

According to IDC, the APAC tape drive market was worth $210 million in 2003, of which 18 percent, or $38 million, came from India. By 2007, the APAC figure is expected to touch $280 million. This means that India could account for $50 million worth of tape drives by 2007. IDC also points out that the mid-range and low-end drives are the ones which are growing at a brisk pace, while the entry- and enterprise-level drives have come to a stage where they have become stagnant. In 2003, DLT drives accounted for 35 percent marketshare in the Asia Pacific region, followed by 4mm drives with 32 percent marketshare. But now the trend is showing that SDLT technology is going to capture more market in the mid-range segment. IDC forecasts that higher-capacity drive segments (>100 GB) are also expected to show strong growth through 2006, buoyed by second-generation SDLT and LTO drives.

Value for money

Tape continues to be the cheapest back-up medium, which ideally should only be used for archival purposes. It is cheaper by 30-40 percent compared to disk-based solutions. Vendors across the country are of the view that the tape market is not going to disappear because of its numerous advantages. Says Avijit Basu, country manager, network storage solutions, customer solutions group, Hewlett Packard India, 'Firstly, tape is cost-effective. Nothing can be as cost-effective as tape. Second, tape itself has matured over time because of LTO'there is more standardisation and performance. Speed is ramping up in every version. Reliability has also increased; earlier there was concern about its reliability, which is today no longer a point of contention.'

Avijit added, 'In the expensive online environment one cannot keep both mission and business critical data. The most cost-effective solution is to keep the media source somewhere else in a different building in a different city. This is the most cost-effective disaster recovery solution. Because of this, tape is going to stay for decades.' He says that HP has a 22-27 percent marketshare in tape drives, and is therefore the market leader. 'This data is from IDC which suggests we are the clear leader'I hope that we will continue to be the leader in the coming years.'

According to HP India, among the various technologies, Ultirum LTO is the clear winner. This is because it has a very clear roadmap, standardisation, and meets the expectations of customers.

Tape is the cornerstone

Jim Simon, director of marketing, Quantum Asia-Pacific, says that despite disk-based back-up technologies, tape remains the first choice for back-up and restoration operations. This is not to say that disk-based systems are not gaining acceptance in the space, since disks are used for backing-up certain types of data. 'But the truth is that tape, not disk, is the cornerstone of nearly every organisation's existing back-up plan, and it is the medium for which all major back-up applications were originally engineered. A transition from tape to disk will happen gradually, but enterprises will not rip out their existing tape-based resources; rather, they will use disk for backing-up select data,' Simon says.

Vendors feel that what is emerging is a trend where both these technologies will co-exist in two tiers. Disk will be used for quicker back-up, but tape will be used for more permanent retention of weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly data.

Solutions become more intelligent

While enterprises are still holding on to their tape-based assets, tape-based solutions are becoming more intelligent with the emergence of super drives. These drives pack in more features such as lower bit-error rates, higher bit densities, greater capacities and native fibre channel interfaces. These tape drives are also more reliable and efficient, as well as easier to use in networked storage environments.

Simon says that Quantum is at the forefront of driving tape-based technologies with its SDLT range of tapes. He also says that the company is expanding its local presence. 'India is one of the few markets in the APAC region where we want to increase our presence. Of late we kept ourselves away from high-volume products in the region, and concentrated more on high-end products. But now the situation is different, and we are in the process of entrenching ourselves in the high-volume business as well. Our aim is to have enterprise-class products at an SME price point very soon. We are already working with our R&D and manufacturing teams to come out with such products globally. Once this happens our market share will increase tremendously, and India will play a key role in this.'

Shailesh Agarwal, country manager, storage solutions, IBM India, says that the tape market has matured today, and more companies are coming up with updated versions of technologies which is enticing users to stick to tape. IBM feels that as IT budgets shrink, low-cost tape storage has become more attractive as a way to manage ever-increasing corporate data growth. From a single tape drive to libraries capturing petabytes of data, IBM TotalStorage tape drives, tape libraries and virtual tape servers offer a range of solutions to meet a company's data management needs and address growing business resiliency concerns and regulatory requirements.

Hard to replace

According to Pushpendra Kumar Gupta, director, strategic development, APJK, EMC Software, 'Most organisations have in gone for tape-based back-up, whether enterprises or SMEs. But the trend is changing since the last one year as the new SATA disks have come at a very cost-effective price. Nevertheless, tape back-up is not going away. People who need faster backups and restoration are primarily using disk-to-disk back-ups, but for disaster recover and long-term archival, they are doing disk-to-disk-to-tape back-up. If disaster strikes, they will restore operations using off-site tape back-ups.'

He also points out that apart from this, disk is a non-removable medium, therefore it cannot replace tape as the back-up medium; it is only a staging medium. Disks are expensive and they incur more investment for increasing performance. They do reduce the usage of tape and tape-handling costs, but are still expensive for the mid-size organisation.

Future of tape

There can hardly be any doubt that tape is here to stay for a long time, but vendors also feel that the disk will co-exist with tape. 'In India we have so many SMEs that it is impossible to negate tape. I feel that disk and tape will go hand-in-hand, and that some companies which are opting for disk solutions will also have tape as their back-up,' Pushpendra opines.

SDLT and DLT are the technologies which are going to have the largest amount of growth in the tape drive market; vendors have already outlined their roadmap for these technologies. The most important factor favouring these products is their cost-competitiveness and higher functionality. Since vendors feel that disk has just started picking up in the Indian market, tape remains the old horse with more races to compete.

Recently, StorageTek's vice-president and general manager, Jon Benson, predicted that worldwide the majority of companies' storage will eventually move to tape. That's why his company is going full bore at customers with a barrage of products led by tape, including virtual tape libraries.

If Benson is right, come what may, tape drives will always remain one of the most sought after technology solutions.