Whatever happened to tape storage?

A decade ago disk seemed a cheaper, more reliable solution for business's ever-increasing data needs. But, tape met the challenge of competition and underwent numerous improvements, many borrowed from disk; unprecedented cartridge capacity increases, improved drive reliability, vastly improved bit error rates, much longer media life and faster data rates. Today, it is estimated that 70 per cent of all data still resides on tape storage, and tape storage vendors continue to innovate to drive new features and economies into tape.

Four customer analytics strategies can give your organization a deeper understanding of its customers, the capacity to share information internally and across the value chain, the ability to move from reactive to predictive decision making, and adapt business models that enable faster creation of value. "Tape Storage Future Directions and the Data Explosion" a white paper from Horison Information Systems presents details on tape's bright future, and how a mix of tape and disk technologies can meet the numerous issues facing IT from performance, compliance and security, to cost, energy use and data protection.