Spectra Logic Installs 500PB of Tape Storage

Spectra Logic Corp. announced strong revenue and profitability results for the first half of fiscal year 2013, which ended 31st December.

Following six consecutive years of profitability, Spectra Logic’s momentum continued as high capacity, tape-based archives have become the prevailing standard for media and entertainment, HPC, cloud and general IT organisations challenged with storing, managing and accessing massive amounts of unstructured file data.

Company revenue increased 9% year-over-year during the first half led by strong revenue growth of its enterprise T-Finity tape library.

The company installed 550PB (or .55EB) of tape library storage capacity during the six-month period ended 31st December.
 
"Our financial strength combined with strong growth in the file archive market is enabling us to invest significantly in R&D, which will be reflected in a strong slate of new products and technologies this coming year. In fact, over the next 12 months we plan to launch a large number of new data storage products – more than were released in the past five years combined," said Nathan Thompson, Spectra Logic’s CEO. "The value of tape technology and its essential role in today’s modern data centres is indisputable for both traditional backup as well as the tape-based file archive market. This value is recognised and embraced by leading organisations worldwide – and is reflected in Spectra Logic’s consistent growth and momentum."
 
Data storage trends bolstered the company’s growth as unstructured data continued to grow unabated, with many of the world’s largest data centres storing petabyte- and exabyte-level data volumes on automated tape library platforms. An example of this was the installation of the tape archive system for NCSA’s Blue Waters supercomputing system, which is one of the largest and most powerful supercomputers in the world. Data storage needs for scalable, power efficient platforms helped fuel demand for integrated tape library and disk appliance storage solutions, and accelerated demand for its tape-based data storage archives.

"Spectra Logic has a proven reputation for storage technology innovation and delivers unmatched customer support. We view Spectra as a very strategic partner within our storage product portfolio," said Aaron Cardenas, CEO, P1 Technologies, a SpectraEDGE channel partner. "Many customers today are grappling with unrelenting data growth and need efficient solutions to store, access and retrieve vast data volumes. Spectra Logic delivers large-scale, long-term storage and active archiving solutions with innovative features such as TranScale, which enables customers to seamlessly transform and scale an existing tape library, as well as advance media health monitory capabilities. Solutions like these exemplify why Spectra Logic enjoys continued growth and success."
 
Additional fiscal year H1 2013
Spectra Logic highlights include:

• Customer satisfaction andreputation for quality. Spectra’s tape libraries earned first place in the Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com
• International expansion across Europe, Latin America and Asia. With products now installed in 44 countries worldwide.
• Channel partner reseller base grew 10%. The SpectraEDGE channel partner network now exceeds 600 worldwide reseller partners.
• Product introductions. Including the availability of 10GbE iSCSI connectivity to tape, the expansion of its enterprise-level encryption key management portfolio with TKLM, the commencement of LTO-6 shipments, and a partnership with Harris Media, LLC to deliver an end-to-end media archive workflow.
  Quality Awards winning both the enterprise and midrange tape library categories. The 2012 Tape Library Quality awards marked the sixth time the company has won first place in a Quality Awards category, and capped a year of significant success and technological achievements. Spectra also received high customer accolades in a Taneja Group Research Study.

"Spectra has achieved consistent, profitable growth by maintaining a rigorous focus on automated tape library technology innovation. This is a tribute to our dedicated employees and the unmatched efficiency advantages tape delivers in data integrity, energy efficiency, space utilisation and system reliability. Our highly scalable storage systems perfectly align with the movement toward increased data retention, which is driving the need for data storage systems that exceed petabyte and exabyte capacities," added Thompson.