Fujifilm Introduces TCO Calculator

FujiFilm Recording Media U.S.A., Inc., a subsidiary of FujiFilm Corporation, introduced a proprietary TCO Calculator to help IT professionals assess the TCO of automated tape systems compared to low-cost disk and cloud-based archive storage.

This free online tool, developed by Brad Johns Consulting LLC, storage economics expert, and sponsored by the company, calculates five and ten year scenarios for the TCO when using automated tape storage, disk-based and cloud-based archive storage.

“A major challenge for IT professionals today is estimating the TCO across various storage platforms,” said Kevin Benitez, product marketing manager, FujiFilm. “When users have the ability to assess the TCO of automated tape systems compared to low-cost disk and cloud-based storage, they’ll find that tape storage remains unmatched in terms of cost, capacity, reliability, and security, and continues to play a vital role in data protection and storage.“

Today, tape and disk work together in disk-based storage systems to address different necessities like backup, offline storage, nearline storage, and capture and offload. The amount of data created today is immense, and data protection is becoming more crucial. Tape technology allows data to remain protected in the event of malware or a data security breach while saving data centers thousands of dollars.

How TCO calculator works
TCO calculations are based on data entered into the TCO tool and assumptions are made through publicly available sources, such as vendor websites and industry research. By entering the quantity of data loaded in year in terabytes, the annual growth rate of stored data, and the percentage of data retrieved each year, results may be derived. The TCO calculations are for five and ten years of operation. Capacity is acquired as needed, based on the growth rate of stored data. The derived assumptions are based on historical trends and published research as well as the user-specified capacity.

After entering data into the TCO Calculator, users have the option to download a customizable report, which includes an executive summary, key cost assumptions, and TCO by cost category. The report also includes a detailed analysis of cost type (e.g., energy costs, offsite costs, service fees, bandwidth, etc.).