Tape’s Nine Lives Aren’t Up Yet

These past six decades have been rocky for tape, as the data storage technology has endured its fair share of triumphs and bumps in the road all while remaining among the most popular means of housing enterprise information. Along the way tape’s proven to be not unlike a cat, as pundits keep trying to kill it off but it keeps coming back.

Well, it appears tape hasn’t quite used all nine of its lives just yet. According to industry expert George Crump, tape came full circle at the recent EMC World 2012 gathering, as the technology is once again getting the praise it deserves. Not only was a tape vendor present at the gathering, but the conference’s namesake also made waves by announcing the release of tape products.

This shift is seen as somewhat of a move to the dark side for the company. Long a proponent of disk technology, EMC embraced tape at its recent conference for one simple reason, Crump said. Tape is simply better than disk for long-term retention. It always has been and seems always will be, as innovations for tape continue to move forward.

It seems long ago industry pundits have written off tape as an irrelevant, outdated and ineffective solution for data backup and recovery programs. But as those of you in the know have always realized, there’s simply no better option than tape to ensure your data is protected.

So while 2012 has been dedicated to the 60th anniversary of tape’s debut, it’s important to keep in mind that tape never really went anywhere. Even if some tried repeatedly to kill it off. It’s been here the whole time serving organizations of all sizes and type to store, backup and, more recently, archive mission-critical data.

Big data is a trend that none of us are now able to escape. We can run, we certainly can hide, but it doesn’t seem like that will do any of us good. If it’s not already here, big data is coming in a big way.

So whether you’re a small company just getting started, or a large enterprise with multiple locations, the chances are good that you could use a little help in dealing with big data. That’s why it’s great to see more data storage vendors embracing tape – some for the first time while for others it’s more of a re-embrace of sorts. Innovations and new solutions for tape are helping organizations of all sizes deal with changing data requirements.

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