Anyone involved with managing any serious amounts of data (and when I say “serious amounts of data,” I mean multiple PBs of data) knows that today’s disk-based storage solutions are, for the most part, not equipped to meet the diverse requirements of storing this amount of data. While still an extreme use case, a growing number of organizations have to manage PBs of data.
Bad news is only bad until you hear it, then it’s just information followed by opportunity. Information may arrive in political, personal, technological and economic forms. It creates opportunity which brings people, vision, ideas and investment together. When thinking about a future history of 2013, three (3) opportunities come to mind.
The factors that influenced which tape library to use in your environment used to be much simpler in nature when tape was used primarily as a backup target. But as disk has evolved to assume that role, tape libraries have evolved to provide new features so they may assume a much more strategic position within organizations to support their Big Data and Cloud initiatives. In this webcast, I take a look at how to choose the right tape library for your environment in light of these new forces that are impacting the use of tape libraries within organizations.
The tape pendulum is swinging back to the middle with more and more people coming to recognize that tape is more than alive; it has a bright future in front of it. However what people may fail to recognize is the many innovations going on right now in tape that are primed to be announced in just the next few years. In this fifth and final blog entry in my interview series with Spectra Logic’s CEO Nathan Thompson, he pulls back the veil a bit and provides some insight into what we should expect tape libraries to deliver in the next few years.
Despite some claims to the contrary, the primary use case for tape remains in the context of backup. It is HOW tape is being used in the backup process that is changing. As it does, it is putting tape in a better position to solve certain data protection concerns that disk and even new flash media drives can never solve. In part IV of my interview series with Spectra Logic’s CEO Nathan Thompson, he discusses why tape will remain an integral part of backup processes for a long time to come.
Despite the marketing buzz about the demise of tape, one almost indisputable fact remains: up to 80% of the world’s data resides on tape. Statistics like that helped to convince Spectra Logic that there was a bright light at the end of the tape tunnel and prompted it to double down on tape products. In this second part of my interview with Spectra Logic’s CEO, we discuss what Spectra Logic saw–that others did not–that led it to focus more heavily on tape as opposed to disk.
One of the most engaging and friendly CEOs one can hope to meet in the technology industry is none other than Spectra Logic’s CEO Nathan Thompson who came from very humble beginnings and has worked hard to build Spectra Logic to what it is today – the leading manufacturer of tape libraries. However, how Spectra Logic came to assume this position is an interesting story in and of itself. Today, in the first part of this interview series with Nathan, he sheds some light on how Spectra Logic became so tape centric and even today views tape as an underserved market.
DCIG is very excited to announce the availability of its inaugural DCIG 2012 Big Data Tape Library Buyer’s Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 140 features on more than 60 tape libraries from 8 different storage providers. Driven by the explosion of storage requirements to address “Big Data” and the “Cloud,” organizations are now more than ever looking for cost-effective, viable storage media on which to store this data. This is why DCIG believes tape libraries are poised to be one of the big benefactors of these growing storage demands which prompted DCIG to produce its first ever Tape Library Buyer’s Guide to help enterprises choose the right solution for their environment.
This year’s spring Storage Networking World (SNW) 2012 show was unlike any other that I had attended in the past. While I had good conversations with the folks from FalconStor, HP, QLogic, Spectra Logic and Nimbus Data Systems among others, what was most remarkable about this SNW was the lack of notable new announcements around storage.
Today is the last business day of 2011 and with it DCIG brings you our top most read and referenced blog entries. Each blog entry is compelling, yet timeless. What we find ironic about these blogs is that even as topics like “cloud,” “deduplication,” and “virtualization” generate a great deal of buzz, simple blog entries on storage, backup and data center labeling outperform them due to their foundations for IT leaders and practitioners.
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