EMASS announces new high-capacity tape drive family; boosts capacity and performance of AML library products.

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 12, 1995--EMASS Inc., a leading supplier of data storage solutions for enterprise-wide computing, Wednesday unveiled a new line of half-inch cartridge tape drives that extends the capabilities of the EMASS line of automated media libraries and brings breakthrough achievements in tape drive capacity and performance to critical enterprise computing applications.

The new EMASS 8590 family of tape drives and media set new standards for reliability, performance and capacity for data center and open-systems computing environments. The new drives are fully compatible with the full EMASS line of automated media libraries including the AML/2, AML/E and AML/J. Because of the media-independent design of all EMASS libraries, any currently installed AML libraries can be field-upgraded with the new 8590 drives.

``Enterprise users are demanding new levels of performance and capacity with better reliability than in previous generations of drives,'' said Mitchell Bohn, president and chief operating officer at EMASS. ``With the 8590 product family, EMASS has responded to our customers with a new generation of tape technology that sets new standards for reliability, performance, capacity and affordability.''

The EMASS 8590 product family is based on a new 3480-like half-inch cartridge tape media that is expected to become the new enterprise media interchange standard, and represents a significant improvement over the current 3480/3490 in the critical areas of capacity, throughput, data integrity and media life expectancy. The 8590 drive boasts a native capacity of 10 gigabytes per cartridge, a 50-fold improvement over the 3480 standard.

The new 8590 format also provides a marked improvement in data throughput compared with the existing half-inch tape standard with a 9 megabytes per second data rate, a 300 percent improvement over existing 3480/3490 products.

Advanced Drive Technology

EMASS' 8590 tape drive is the first major breakthrough in industry standard tape drive technology since 3480 format debuted more than a decade ago and is optimized for EMASS libraries. Building on the technology base of longitudinal recording technology, the 8590 drive incorporates dual module interleaved thin film heads that are perhaps the most durable tape drive heads ever created. These new thin film heads are designed to withstand up to 100 million passes, effectively eliminating the need for head replacement for the entire life of the drive.

Numerous innovations in error correction and enhanced data recording have produced data integrity ratings 100 times better than that of 3480-class drives.

The interleaved serpentine recording format and very high data density produce a cartridge capacity of 10 gigabytes. Optional hardware data compression can increase capacity to as high as 40 gigabytes per cartridge.

A simple tape path design and efficient media handling, bolstered by leader, threader and sniffer sensors provide very efficient start-stop tape operations without any additional stress to the media and optimization for EMASS robotics.

New Media Formulation

To complement innovations in the drive hardware, EMASS' 8590 media is based on a new, ultra-durable evaporated metal particle evaporated formulation. The 8590 media packs 1,100 feet (300 meters) of half-inch tape into a 3480-type cartridge. Any file on the tape can be accessed in an average of just 30 seconds, while a complete end-to-end search takes just 60 seconds.

The EMASS 8590 family has been optimized for automated storage environments, and can be installed with any of the EMASS family of robotic libraries. With the new high capacity cartridge, a single EMASS Quadratower storage module attached to an AML/E or AML/2 library can accommodate up to 57.6 terabytes. EMASS' high-end AML/2 library can be configured with up to eight Quadratowers for a total near-line capacity of 460 terabytes.

For entry-level storage automation requirements, the EMASS AML/J offers up to 45 terabytes of capacity when configured with the new 8590 drives. Additionally, any EMASS AML library can accommodate mixed media environments of existing 3480, 3490 and 3490E and compatible products from several vendors, EMASS 8490, 8590, EMASS D2, D1, 8mm, VHS, DLT and 5.25-inch optical media.

The new EMASS tape drive products are fully compatible with the entire EMASS software product line, providing comprehensive storage automation solutions for MVS, VM, UNIX and AS/400 environments.

Specifically designed to meet the requirements of data center and UNIX computing environments, the EMASS 8590 drives are optimized for both the start-stop functionality required with MVS and VM mainframe operating systems and for streaming-mode operations under UNIX.

To stand up to these rigorous demands of MVS data centers, the 8590 products are an extension to the most proven industry-standard tape technology in the world, instead of using exotic, untested and unreliable technology that would put critical corporate data at risk.

The EMASS 8590 with the appropriate EMASS controller can be connected via two ESCON fiber-optics channels for optimal data throughput under MVS, VM and ESCON capable hosts. The 8590 drives can be directly attached to most computing platforms capable of supporting SCSI connections. The tape drives support single or dual SCSI-3 fast/wide differential attachment.

The EMASS SCSI-based 8590 products are scheduled for availability third quarter 1995, with the ESCAN products to follow in the fourth quarter 1995.

EMASS provides high-performance data storage products to diverse computing environments: Workstation to supercomputer; distributed or centralized; traditional local area networks or client/server. Enterprise computer centers in a broad spectrum of industries -- financial services, banking, insurance, manufacturing, petroleum, scientific, broadcast and health care -- currently use or will benefit from the total EMASS solution.

EMASS has sales and service offices worldwide. EMASS is a wholly owned subsidiary of E-Systems Inc. (NYSE:ESY). E-Systems, with sales of more than $2 billion, is a leading worldwide supplier of electronic equipment for mission-critical data.

CONTACT: EMASS Inc.

Christopher Kokias, 303/705-3706

or

JPR Communications

Judy Smith, 818/343-9474