An alliance of tape media vendors hopes to raise awareness of the 50-year-old technologys merits and to help users determine the best fitting solutions.
Officials of the Tape Technology Council, who began forming last year, on Tuesday launched the group and the Web site, tapecouncil.org, hoping to reach users who are considering converting to disk backup, or who are without archiving products at all, said organization director Rich Harada, of Creative Businesses Inc., in Hillsdale, N.J.
Some of the groups initial members, who are each paying $15,000 a year and who each get one vote, are IBM, Imation Corp., Seagate Technology LLC, Sony Corp., Storage Technology Corp. and Quantum Corp.
The groups potential value to users, said Bob Abraham, an analyst with Freeman Reports, in Ojai, Calif., is to “provide them with a large pool of information, as opposed to hearing singularly each individual technologies, or each individual vendor.”
Advancement in disk technology in recent years should be perceived as “drift,” not as a major change, Abraham said.
While the Tape Technology Council is wider in scope and more vague on deliverables than technology-specific groups like the LTO Consortium, DDS Forum or AIT Forum, theres “absolutely not” anything wrong with that, Abraham said. “Tapes going to be here, as strong as ever,” 10 years from now, he said.
Still, Harada is clear that the councils primary mission is marketing. Harada also runs the High Density Storage Association, for tape and optical jukebox and library products, and the Optical Storage Technology Association
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