The Renaissance Of SLR Technology - Company Business and Marketing

Computer Technology Review, Dec, 2000 by Gregg Ormsbee

The fitting replacement for DAT technology

Magnetic tape has successfully addressed IT market requirements for data backup by providing a secure, high storage capacity, removable media, at a low cost per MB/GB of recorded storage. Although the demise/displacement of tape has been predicted for years by various CD/DVD/competing removable technologies, tape remains king for serious backup of business data.

This article will focus on tape technology applicable to the SMB market. This segment consists of IT users who demand reliable low cost backup with a street price of $1500 or less.

The unit volume leader in the segment, DAT technology, has reached a pinnacle with the DDS-4 format. The storage capacity demands for the SMB user are continuing to grow. But DAT technology is now so highly leveraged that DDS-5 products may never materialize. Further enhancements to DAT storage capacity and to a lesser extent transfer rate require either "new inventions" or are at the "cutting edge" of tape recording technology.

The truncated capacity of the current DDS road map leaves room for other tape technologies to absorb DAT customers whose capacity requirements have outgrown the current DDS roadmap and capture "new" customers in the SMB sector. There are currently at least eight available technology families vying for market share in the SMB segment.

The popularity of DAT has set some consumer expectations for price point, performance, form factor, and availability of family extensions such as automation. In order for a different tape technology to successfully capture the DDS market space it must meet all consumer expectations in these areas as well as effectively address recent computer trends such as "RAS" (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability).

The customer will be looking for a technology with plenty of headroom; with per drive disk capacities in the 73GB range the customer will look especially close at capacity/performance futures. The customer will require a tape technology that can be cost effectively deployed today and which promises a cost-effective future.

A Little Tape History

In 1990 the disk industry was on an exponential growth path (and still is) in terms of capacity and performance; however tape technology was struggling to keep pace. QIC committee companies were no longer able to bring competitive devices to market easily. Each company had different expertise mixes related to recording. Some companies were good at high track density, some at high bit (linear) density, some specialized in multiple data channels.

Depending on how a new format was composed particular companies may have been granted competitive advantages based on their expertise. In this environment it was difficult to agree upon development standards lest one company enter the market before the competition.

In the early 90s companies were forced to evaluate basic recording techniques and make choices. These choices were based on which format would best suit future requirements for extensions to capacity and performance balanced with "in house engineering expertise". Consideration was given to track density, track pitch, available media area, recording format (helical scan vs. linear/longitudinal tracks), tape speed, and system dynamics.

Some companies elected to take devices from the consumer sector (8mm Video and DAT audio), which already had relatively high recording density due to high stripe pitch (track density) and adapt them for data storage usage. These companies created formats specialized for data recording, added enhancements for ECC, and computer interfaces (SCSI) to the devices.

Still others adopted existing media styles and created new basic formats. DLT (then in the DEC world) has its heritage from the mainframe "3480 square tape". Tandberg Data elected to stay with the QIC data cartridge style.

Exabyte (then a start up) was the only company who chose 8mm video as a base technology; many manufacturers developed drives based around DAT drive technology. DAT companies included Aiwa, Archive (Conner/Seagate), Hewlett Packard, RByte, Sony, and WangDAT. Thus diversification in the computer backup tape industry was born in earnest.

As we enter the 21st century the tape technology choice war is still going on. The last three years have seen introductions for new helical devices (AIT, VXA-1) as well as linear (Onstream, LTO family) drives.

It Starts With The Technology

Core Technology: A major portion of the basic tape unit cost and performance capability relates to the recording technique chosen. Regarding mechanism cost, all tape drives require a SCSI interface, Data Buffer, Hardware Data Compression, and Micro-controller system. It is safe to say cost levels for these components between the various technologies are similar.

Where the cost differences between the technologies come in to play is in the components used directly for the recording process such as the magnetic head(s), Electric motor(s) required, actuators required, and precision mechanical components to implement the recording format. In these areas the technologies vary widely.