Counterpoint about the future of tape. (Technology Arena Disk vs. Tape).

With more than 70 years of combined experience in the tape industry, we have heard countless predictions about the impending demise of tape technologies for data storage and retrieval. In fact, the first time that each of us heard these kinds of predictions was during the first months of our very first jobs in the tape field.

[Kelly Beavers began his career in the tape storage industry in June 1974, the same month IBM introduced a new product called MSS with tremendous fanfare and boldly announced that it would quickly make tape obsolete. Juan Rodriguez started his career in the tape industry in July 1963 and, immediately upon starting, saw many of his colleagues re-assigned to work on disk technology that would relegate tape to relic status alongside punch cards.]

As you can imagine, it was a bit disconcerting to hear a eulogy for the industry we had just committed our careers to, but luckily those predictions were as accurate as all of the others in the decades since.

One of the reasons these predictions have persisted is that they have been the de facto marketing message for wave after wave of non-tape storage technologies. Proclaiming in broad terms that a new technology would mean the end of tape has always been the quickest way for a new storage technology to get noticed. Those marketing slogans may be provocative, but they have always interfered with a more informed discussion of the future of tape and the future of the storage industry.

The Future of Storage

When we think about the future of storage, we see the landscape the way most IS/IT managers do:

* Non-tape technologies will not displace tape because tape has strengths that will never be matched, thanks to the physical characteristics of tape and the rapid and sustained pace of innovation in the tape industry.

* Tape and non-tape storage solutions will be complementary technologies, deployed for applications that play to their specific strengths.

* The market for both tape and non-tape storage products will continue to grow because the applications that take advantage of their specific strengths will see a growing demand in the future.

These predictions are not provocative, but they are based on a common sense assessment of the characteristics of tape and non-tape technologies. They are also corroborated by the assessments (and buying habits) of so many IS/IT managers we talk to--people who have worked with multiple technologies, know their strengths and limitations, and know what works in different applications.

The primary strength of disk technology is its ability to rapidly access data that is in high demand. When the storage applications require rapid data access times above any other quality, disk has a clear advantage over tape.

But for applications where rapid data access times are not the only priority, or where rapid data access is one of many equally important characteristics needed, tape's significant advantages in terms of true cost, density, reliability, data protection and portability will continue to make it the technology of choice.

Tape's Advantage in True Cost

One of the areas where tape has a clear advantage over other technologies is cost. That may sound odd because so many disk vendors say that disk solutions are less expensive, but their claims are based on math that has a creative flair to it.

In their most commonly cited examples, vendors compare the cost per gigabyte or terabyte of a naked IDE drive to the cost of storing that same data on tape. IDE drives are cheap, which allows the math to work out in the favor of disk, but please remember that for an IDE drive to be functional in this application, it needs to be surrounded by special packaging, extra electronics, and other equipment that is not inexpensive. When you factor in these other costs, the price of disk storage per gigabyte or terabyte skyrockets and tape has a significant cost advantage.

Although the cost of disk storage is falling, tape's cost advantage continues to grow, thanks to innovations that will drop the price of on-line tape storage (including media) to less than $1000 per terabyte by 2005. That is a fraction of the true cost of non-tape storage, and it will make tape an even more attractive choice for any application where cost is a factor.

The Rapid Pace of Innovation in Tape

The discussion of cost brings up an important point about tape that is generally overlooked when it is compared to disk: there is often a mistaken assumption that tape is a static technology that is standing still while other technologies are moving forward. Anyone who has been in the tape field as long as we have knows how much the technology has changed over time.

The pace of change in the past few years alone has been very rapid, and that pace will increase in the coming years, based on the aggressive product roadmaps released in the past few months by tape storage companies including Exabyte.

Tape's Advantage in Density

One of clearest measures of the pace of innovation in the tape industry is density. In this case, density means GBytes/cubic inch or GBytes/rack u. Tape has a distinct density advantage over non-tape technologies, and that advantage is increasing. Tape companies are packing more and more data capacity into tape drives and media, and achieving greater and greater density in tape libraries with minimal footprints. Some new mid-range tape libraries are packing 60TB into a 20u rack space. In a few years, that same 20u rack space will hold l00-200TB. That is incredible density, and it is very appealing to IS/IT managers who are struggling to fit more storage and computing power into space that they cannot expand due to physical limitations or budget restrictions.

Achieving that kind of density is impossible for non-tape technologies for a very simple reason: every disk drive needs a duplicate in order to guard against the possibility of crashes. This requirement for twice as much hardware means that disk solutions provide much less capacity than tape solutions of a similar size. With density becoming a bigger topic of discussion among IS/IT managers, tape has a built-in advantage over disk that is growing with each tape drive and tape automation advancement.

Tape's Advantage in Reliability and Data Protection

Another advantage of tape is the reliability of the media in terms of protecting your data against catastrophic events--which is an invaluable attribute for applications related to archiving and backup. Problems on one tape cannot affect another tape, and a problem within a tape cannot spread to other areas of a tape. For example, a virus that is put onto tape cannot spread and infect other data on that tape. That virus is contained by the physical nature of the tape and can be easily dealt with. In contrast, a virus that gets onto a disk has the potential to compromise the entire disk and every other disk to which it is networked.

Similarly, physical damage to a disk drive is usually catastrophic. Any damage to one area of the disk renders the entire disk unusable and results in the loss of that data. In contrast, unless a tape cartridge is burned beyond recognition or shredded to confetti, you will still be able to retrieve data from it. That is because physical damage to one area of the tape is limited to that area. If necessary, you can remove the damaged area, splice it back together and have usable media.

When you combine these factors with the fact that tape does not crash, it is clear why airplanes use tape in their Black Boxes instead of disk. It is the same reason why tape will always be the dominant technology for any application where data protection is of utmost importance.

Tape's Advantage in Portability

With disaster recovery becoming a more urgent issue for organizations, storage systems must allow for the easy portability of data--and this is another area where tape will always have a clear advantage over other technologies. Transporting tape cartridges to a secondary location or to offsite storage is simple and comparatively inexpensive because of their compact size and relatively low weight.

Disk drives do not have the same portability, due to their size, weight, fragility and the need to use special packaging that helps the media withstand the rigors of being moved to a new location. Using disk for these kinds of disaster recovery and archiving applications is simply not practical, and it is an area where tape's physical characteristics make it the clear choice.

The Future of Tape

Non-tape technologies continue to make advances that make them very valuable to IS/IT managers for applications where rapid data accessibility is the dominant storage need. That segment of the market will continue to see growth in the future.

However, for applications where portability, lower cost, higher density and data protection are important storage needs, tape technology has a clear advantage for IS/IT managers with these priorities. The advantages of tape are significant and continue to grow as a result of the creativity of innovators in the tape industry. Despite predictions to the contrary, the market for tape storage products continues to grow, with analyst firms projecting steady overall growth for tape drives and double-digit growth in sales of high-density tape automation products.

The future is exciting for both tape and non-tape technologies, and we expect to see tremendous advancements as innovators continue to make advancements that better meet the storage needs of customers. One thing that we do not expect to change is the stream of predictions about the demise of tape--we expect those to last another 40 years, as tape continues to be an important technology in the storage industry.

www.exabyte.com

Juan Rodriguez and Kelly Beavers are co-founders of Exabyte Corporation (Boulder, Cob.)

                             Non-Tape   Tape
                             Storage   Storage

Faster Speed of Data Access     X
Lower True Cost per TB                    X
Higher Density                            X
Maximum Data Protection                   X
Easier Transportability                   X

Technology Advantages: Tape vs. Non-Tape Technologies