by Bob Conway 

Today, I wanted to discuss the success of open standards in tape, benefits of open standards, and discuss DDS/DAT and LTO open standards.

Quarter-on-quarter shipments confirm the rise of open standard LTO Ultrium tape technology and the subsequent demise of other proprietary tape technologies.

Inspired with the success of DDS/DAT, the LTO Ultrium technology underlines the importance of an open industry standard tape format in achieving true market acceptance.

Magnetic tape of one form or another has been used for computer backup and archive applications for over fifty years, with the first tape drive launched in 1951 (a half-inch tape drive called the Uniservo we believe). Since then, massive technology advances have been made in tape formulation, data density, error handling and reliability, interfaces, and form factor. Today's industry leading tape drives from the LTO Ultrium technology family deliver compressed data capacities up to 1.6 TBs, speeds of 240 MB/second and state-of-the-art reliability and security.

Following the launch of the first tape drive, well over 30 different families of tape technology have been introduced, from 9-track to QIC, VXA to SAIT. Of these technologies only two have been open industry standard formats: DDS/DAT and LTO Ultrium. Both technologies have dominated the tape market and remain as the highest shipping tape technologies in 2008.

What's So Great About an Open Standard?

HP has made a conscious decision to invest in two open industry standard tape formats; DDS/DAT and LTO Ultrium. Both technologies have been highly successful. But just what part did the open standard play in this success?

An open standard is a documented description of technology that is publicly available. It allows anyone with the necessary technical know-how and resources to develop and build products based on the standard. Hardware and software products complying with the standard should be compatible with each other regardless of the manufacturer.

Open industry standards promote a number of benefits for customers. These include:

• Investment protection - customers are unlikely to be at the mercy of a single manufacturer's fortunes, there is a robust future roadmap and assured compatibility.
• Wide availability and assurance of supply - an open standard leads to multiple suppliers of both drives and media covering a broader range of channels and geographies.
• Backward compatibility and interchange – standards bodies ensure that each manufacturer's drive is able to interchange data with other manufacturer's drives. Additionally, they ensure that backward compatibility is maintained to provide an easy upgrade path protecting previous investment.
• Wider choice of complementary products and services - as independent hardware and software vendors seek to make their products compatible with the standard.
• Faster development times - increased competition means that manufacturers battle to be "first to market" with new drives and new features.
• Lower prices - economies of scale from multiple manufactures mean that the cost of specific parts of the drive and media are gradually decreased. In addition, increased competition leads to ongoing price reductions.

The First Industry Standard Tape Format - DDS/DAT

The DDS format for DAT drives was originally developed in partnership between HP and Sony. Having witnessed some of the issues caused by proprietary technologies, the partnership was committed to making DDS/DAT an open standard tape format for drive and media manufacturers. Soon after its launch in 1989 there were 13 members of the DDS/DAT Manufacturer Group committed to the development of DAT drives and media.

Despite the benefits of an open standard tape format described previously, the DAT technology would not have succeeded without the fact that it also delivers high reliability, appropriate levels of capacity and performance, ease of use and affordability.

Today, having shipped nearly 19 million drives and 280 million pieces of media, DAT technology is the most popular tape drive technology ever. DAT still dominates the low end of the tape drive market with an 82% market share in 2007, according to IDC.

LTO Ultrium Follows Suit

Inspired by the success of DAT, the path of an open standard was chosen for the development of LTO Ultrium and so, in 1997, the LTO Program was formed. Today three companies -- HP, IBM and Quantum -- jointly oversee the development and roadmap of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology providing open format specifications to simplify the complex array of tape storage options and to enable users to have multiple sources of compatible product and media. In addition to the benefits that the LTO Ultrium open standard format brings to customers, the technology also offers performance and affordability to match the needs of the midrange customer better than any other technology available today.

As a result LTO Ultrium is not just an open standard, but the defacto standard in the mid-range tape drive market with 95.2% market-share in calendar 2007. This also equates to a staggering 46% of total worldwide tape drive shipments in calendar 2007.

Bob Conway, Manager, Removable Media Devices Future Product Marketing