Dear Ms. Meade:
Why would you ever recommend tape when disk is cheaper?
Signed,
I Know More Than You Do

Dear Ms. I Know More:
A little misinformation is a dangerous thing. It has become nearly axiomatic that "disk is cheaper than tape.”  This is simply unwarranted faith in the song of the disk-only vendor. The fact is, tape is cheaper than disk. Read More

As someone that loves things to make noise, and go fast, I am always on the hunt for “more”.  Unfortunately, more can be expensive.  I am always looking for ways to make my toys faster, stronger, and of course cooler.  The problem is it normally costs a lot to get just a little improvement.  Whenever I stumble across “free” performance in a product, I feel like I have just won something.  It seemed appropriate to me that while I was on a flight coming home from indulging in one of my passions last week at the Reno Air Races (the fastest motorsport in the world) Spectra Logic  announced some new nTier Deduplication models that are all about more – more performance, more capacity and more value.     The first thing most people notice about the new nTier v160 and v320 is how they fit our model lineup.  They do fit in nicely between the  nTier Classic models, addressing the needs of customers that fell in the gap between them, although that really does not tell the whole story.  Based on the nTier 500 chassis, the v160 and v320 carry with them the blistering performance of 500MB/s backup speeds.  When looking at competing models, they offer more capacity, and the best part is—wait for it— they cost a lot LESS.  In one case, less than half the price of a popular competing box.  I wish I could find that in a car part.   In the last week, I have talked with sales reps, partners and customers about the new nTier models.  The comments remain consistent; the IT industry continues to seek ways to do more with less.  Deduplication can help there, but can be cost prohibitive.  The v160 and v320 help do more with less by providing the superior performance needed, with more capacity at a lower cost.  Backup windows will not grow, and often will shrink when the nTier becomes the initial target.  Automated replication and archive tape creation reduce the man hours needed to manage repetitive backup tasks.  This is more value.   I am sure the racers at Reno wish they could find such a deal. It is like JATO for backup!  

A myriad of mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies in the backup and archive hardware market has made customers feel they are on thin ice when making long-term hardware investments. The latest, and potentially most dramatic, the Oracle acquisition of Sun, is affecting the set of customers who already had to endure the buy-out of StorageTek by Sun. This same set of customers is once again faced with questions surrounding product roadmap, support contract costs, and product upgrade availability. They no longer are doing business with a storage hardware innovator; instead they are forced into doing business with a server/database innovator. The idea of an acquisition of Sun by Oracle just may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back on the customers’ willingness to continue to go with the change with no voice in the direction of their products.   As a vendor who has competed in the tape business with Sun/STK for over a decade, we truly don’t know how everything will shake out. However, market analysts are stating that

Oracle will let go of between 10,000 and 15,000 Sun staff Read More