Gartner: LTO now dominates DLT technology; Sales of SDLT drives decline for first time.

Linear Tape Open Ultrium technology dominated shipments of small form factor half-inch cartridge tape drives in 2004, totaling more than 50 percent market share in the category for the first time, according to the latest findings from Gartner Inc.

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LTO accounted for 55.1 percent of unit shipments and 75.9 percent of revenue for the segment, said Gartner. SuperDLT shipments declined on a year-to-year basis for the first time with just 16.3 percent market share. Shipments of standard DLT products also declined and represented 28.3 percent unit share, but just 9.4 percent of revenue.

Fara Yale, research vice president at Gartner, presented the market overview at last month's Gartner Planet Storage conference. According to the Gartner research, the overall tape drive market declined in unit shipments, but dollar volume for the year increased to $2.31 billion. Hewlett Packard was the overall tape drive market share leader with 36 percent of the 1.884 million units shipped in 2004. HP gained that position on the strength of its dominant position in 4mm DAT drives with a 58 percent market share and as the top producer of LTO drives.

Among the highlights and prospects for each tape drive market segment:

4mm DAT

HP is the clear market leader over Certance/Quantum and Sony. DDS-4 was the dominant DAT technology with a 55.8 percent market share, while DAT72 accounted for 28.5 percent of drives shipped. Overall, shipment of DAT drives dropped more than 10 percent from 2003. Still, the DAT market should continue to lead the industry in unit shipments and the DDS roadmap has been extended with HP committing to three more generations of DAT technology. The next product class--DAT160--is expected to be available late this year, according to Gartner.

8mm Helical Scan 

The 8mm market was flat in 2004, with Sony's Advanced Intelligent Tape technology still the leading format by more than a 2:1 margin over Exabyte's VXA and Mammoth combined. Mammoth is projected to reach end of life this year while VXA-3 is due out later this year with a capacity of 160 GB and a data rate of 12 MB/sec. VXA-4 is planned for 2007 and will double the capacity and performance of VXA-3.

Sony has bolstered the low-end of its AIT product offerings with new Turbo drives that are positioned as a more reliable and higher performance alternative for customers to migrate from DDS technology. Sony's roadmap for AIT projects AIT-5 and AIT-6 planned for 2006 and 2008 respectively, each doubling the capacity and performance of the previous generation. The current AIT-4 technology provides a native capacity of 200 GB and a transfer rate of 24 MB/sec.

Small Form Factor Half-Inch Cartridge Drives

Both drive shipments and factory revenues increased over the previous year, on the strength of LTO technology, which accounted for 55 percent of unit shipments and more than 75 percent of revenue for this segment. Overall SFF half-inch cartridge drives represented almost half of all tape drive revenues. Sony's SuperAIT helical scan half-inch technology has yet to make a break-through against LTO and SDLT with fewer than 1000 drives shipped in 2004.

Quantum held the largest single vendor market share with 45 percent of units shipped, consisting of both SDLT and DLT drives. Quantum has the broadest product offerings in the segment with the value-oriented DLT VS products positioned against AIT and 4mm DAT in SMB environments, the SDLT products, which go head-to-head against LTO, and now LTO-2 and LTO-3 drives as a result of its acquisition of Certance.

According to Gartner, this segment will start to diverge, as Quantum's roadmap for SDLT optimizes capacity over performance with a focus on value-added features, such as its DLTice WORM functionality. The LTO roadmap is now specified out to a sixth generation with a native capacity of 3.2 terabytes per cartridge and a data rate of 540 MB/sec.

High End Half-Inch Cartridge

This segment posted the highest unit shipment (up 15.4 percent) and revenue gains (an increase of 13.2 percent) of any tape technology in 2004. Storage Technology Corp. was the market leader in both units and revenue with a 58 percent share of drive shipments and 56 percent of revenue, compared to 39 percent and 40 percent respectively for IBM.

According to Gartner, StorageTek's replacement for the T9940 tape drive is due out later this year, while the company has yet to make decision about a next-generation successor to the 9840C drive. On the IBM side, company's 3592J1A is the first in a new three-generation roadmap for IBM's enterprise tape technology, offering higher capacity and performance than the StorageTek 9940 Series drives.

Making the Right Choice

With the variety of tape formats and technologies available and buyers often facing a daunting range of options, Gartner also offered a set of criteria for selecting the right tape technology and tape drive vendor.

In evaluating the tape drive vendor, Gartner suggests first of all verifying that the vendor is financially viable and determining how the vendor and the technology stack up on a market share basis: winning, losing or standing still? Also, is your current vendor/technology meeting your needs, or should a change be considered?