Sony's Tape Storage Solutions division is preparing its first generation of enterprise tape devices.Sony Electronics Inc.s Tape Storage Solutions division is preparing its first generation of enterprise tape devices, slated for end-user delivery by resellers in spring 2003, officials said Monday.
The new format—Super Advanced Intelligent Tape, or S-AIT 1—will hold .5 terabytes of data uncompressed, or 1.3 TB compressed, and will transfer data at 30MBps.
Pricing for the tapes will be announced in January, said officials in San Jose, Calif. Stand-alone read/write drives will start at about $10,000, and at about $13,000 for automated libraries.
Resellers are expected to include Advanced Digital Information Corp., of Redmond, Wash.; Overland Storage Inc., of San Diego; Qualstar Corp., of Simi Valley, Calif.; and Spectra Logic Corp., of Boulder, Colo., officials said.
Incrementally up to 2006, the S-AIT roadmap includes a second generation with 1TB uncompressed capacity at 60MBps, and successive generations with 2TB at 120MBps and with 4TB at 240MBps.
Also, officials said, the standard midrange AIT products, currently in their third generation at 100GB capacities and 12MB-ps transfer rates, will grow incrementally until 2007 with 200GB at 24MBps, 400GB at 48MBps, and 800Gb at 96MBps.
Data Storage, Data Backup and Storage Virtualization 
