Sony Comes Out From Under Cover.

You can run into Sony products everywhere you turn. VCRs, digital cameras, even the Elmo videocassettes that fascinate my two-year-old son...Sony is well known in home audio and home video. Regular readers of CTR over the years know well that Sony is a powerhouse in the area of computer products as well. You can see the potent hand of Sony's R&D activity in magnetic tape, CD-ROM, and solid state memory.

It is arguable that Sony is the technical moving spirit behind the enormously popular DDS magnetic tape format, used in direct-attach and automated tape storage. Sony recently assembled a group of analysts and press in Tokyo to have a look at Sony's direction, vision, and plans for the future. While it is premature to discuss all that Sony has upcoming, some of their current plans and goals are worth some reflection.

During briefings, Sony demonstrated sensitivity to the data explosion evident in the broadband era. They point to the emergence of rich content evidenced in high quality AV applications, as well as new interactive entertainment developments. With this in mind, Sony will be supplying data storage products and focus on AV-centric storage products, both in optical and magnetic recording products.

Much of Sony's activity will focus on the company's Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) product line, and that activity is currently in two major areas: DDS replacement and midrange tape technology. As all readers are aware, the key OEMs behind DDS (including Sony, Hewlett Packard, and Seagate) will not be developing a DDS-5 product. DDS-4 will continue to ship for the foreseeable future, but the product line will eventually become obsolete. CTR has chronicled the various technologies that seek to fill the gap that DDS' retirement would provide. One of them is Sony's AIT-1, the helical scan tape product introduced originally in 1996.

Beyond this, though, Sony is determined to make a mark in the midrange as well. In a market frequently considered the reserved territory of LTO technology, Quantum's SuperDLT, and Exabyte's Mammoth 2, Sony is proposing their AIT-3, featuring a capacity of 100GB, a 12MB/sec transfer rate, a laminated read head, and Advanced Metal Evaporative tape media.

On the high end, Sony offers the industry its DTF tape drive, and the drive's automation implementation, the PetaSite. This latter is the petabyte-level media asset management product that finds application in document imaging, image processing, and a variety of film implementations.

The Sony R&D facilities in Yokohama are impressive. Their work in head technology, media free of binder chemistry, and materials science left me almost speechless with admiration. The experience reinforces my long-held feeling that Sony's technology R&D is about the best that the industry has to offer the IT community. The Sony executives, who treated their visitors with thoughtful and consistent courtesy, were conscious of their technology strengths; speeds and feeds were at the forefront of their presentations.

But will Sony achieve its goals...to corner the AV data market, establish AIT-1 as the DDS replacement of choice...to position AIT-3 in competition with strong midrange tape technologies? Maybe.

For all the company's acknowledged technology competence, Sony has a history of timid, almost trepid marketing. AIT's strong niche presence in the tape automation space is due in great part to the efforts of Sony Corporation of America executives like Dr. Steve Baker and John Woelburn. But the yeoman efforts of these executives and the entire Sony B and P organization could flounder if the company doesn't market much stronger and harder. The tape industry is as competitive as any market on earth...and more so than many. Sony absolutely has to get above the noise, or the timid will be devoured.

Superior technology does not win the day by itself; strong marketing, promotion, and positioning are an undebatable must. I have little doubt that some of the market analysts and media that enjoyed the visit to Sony's heartland conveyed a similar message. In a time of financial challenge, both in the United States and in Japan, this advice is hard to take. But in the tape industry, to be timid is to be defeated.