Channel silences tape storage death knell
Quantum refutes the "tape is dead" scare stories and wins backing of rivals
Storage vendor Quantum has dismissed its rivals’ attempts to write off the tape backup market as little more than a scaremongering sales tactic.
The vendor, which specialises in both tape- and disk-based backup products, said it was fed up with its competitors sounding the death knell for tape when it is still in high demand from end users.
Speaking to CRN, Gabriel Chaher, vice president of EMEA marketing at Quantum, said: “We acknowledge the market is growing in single digits, but tape is not going to disappear completely [from customer environments] and the format is definitely not dead.”
Quantum’s comments follow EMC’s declaration back in May that the tape market is collapsing, thanks to the growing demand for deduplication and backup appliances.
Chaher said the source of much of the “tape is dead” talk is disk-only vendors, such as EMC. The Quantum man claimed that rivals would not be so quick to hail the format’s demise if it were a feature of their own product portfolios.
“These vendors seem to think the only way to grow their share of the backup market is to run down tape,” argued Chaher. “Tape is not going to die, no matter how much EMC thinks it is.”
When asked what they made of Quantum’s assertions, a representative from EMC declined to comment, but pointed CRN in the direction of a recent blog post by the firm’s global marketing chief technology officer, Chuck Hollis.
In it, Hollis describes graphs showing the market revenue growth figures for tape drives, libraries and media as looking “sort of like a ski slope,” but stopped short of calling the market dead.
“The market demand for these products appears to be contracting in the double-digit percentage range annually,” his blog states.
“This is not to wildly state that tape is dead: it is just that we are all apparently using a lot less of it with every passing year.”
Role of tape
Andy Walsky, vice president of EMEA sales at tape vendor Overland, argues that if there were no future in the tape market, why would Quantum, HP and IBM still be investing in the technology’s development?
“We are currently on the fifth generation of LTO tapes, and HP, IBM and Quantum have already released details of the road map for the next three generations,” he said. “They would not invest in doing that if they did not think the technology had a future.”
He admits that demand for tape as near-line storage has fallen in recent years as network bandwidths have improved and made it quicker to back up to disk. But the medium is still highly valued for archiving purposes, claimed Walsky.
“It is the best archiving technology there is because it is low cost, stable and has a good shelf life, which is hugely important when it comes to storing data for compliance purposes,” he said.
“Tape can also be used to free up disk space by using it to store data that has to be kept, but does not need to be accessed so readily.”
This is a view shared by Bruce Hockin, head of business strategy at distributor Avnet, who said tape continues to be a stalwart of many customers’ data protection strategies.
He added: “Many organisations have effective and established processes for using tape for offsite backup and archiving, so why would they change [to disk] when tape continues to offer strong price versus performance?”
Choose the best strategy
Laurence James, products alliances and solutions marketing manager UK at NetApp, said that with end-user data volumes growing exponentially and energy costs rising, the future of tape is assured.
“The ‘tape is dead’ debate has been doing the rounds in the industry for the past 20 years, but you need only to look at the economics associated with tape to know that it will absolutely have a place for a long time to come,” said James.
“If you think about the amount of energy needed to power up and cool down disks, it makes sense to use tape where you can to take some of those costs out of the equation,” he added.
Paul Hickingbotham, solutions manager at Quantum distribution partner Hammer, said pitting disk against tape is a pointless exercise, as many end users have found a place for both in their IT estates.
“The truth is that both tape and disk offer customers an impressive scope of technological abilities and there is, without a doubt, room in the market for both technologies,” he said. “The key is choosing the best strategy for each individual data protection need.”