LTO: Fujifilm and Sony Licensees of LTO-8 Technology

The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation, announces FujiFilm Corporation, and Sony Corporation are now licensees of Generation 8 technology, meaning that both companies are planning to produce LTO-8 media moving forward.

Products from these two companies will be officially certified by the TPCs, with availability of Generation 8 media anticipated in 4Q19.

With up to 30TB* of compressed capacity and up to 750MB/s* data transfer rates, LTO-8 pushes innovation in tape technology.

In addition, LTO-4, LTO-5, LTO-6 and LTO-7 media are available and continue to provide a value for customers looking for long term storage for retention and compliance, for protection against ransomware, and for cold storage of large unstructured datasets.

“We are pleased to have two licensees for tape solutions allowing us to deliver more product to market, and enabling us to once again provide tape technology solutions, including LTO generation 8, to our partners and end-users,” said Eric Bassier, senior director, Quantum, “As part of the LTO Program, we look forward to continuing to grow tape technology capabilities to meet the growing demands of storage and long-term data retention.“

LTO technology continues to see increased relevance across industries due to the need to house massive amounts of cold data, as well as a need to keep a copy of data offline to mitigate the threat of malware.

Daily, organizations collect large amounts of data, both structured or unstructured, that need to be stored and analyzed to gain valuable insights. With important data on-hand, it is crucial to ensure these assets remain safe. Tape offers offline protection by providing an air gap between the tape media and the computer systems – preventing systems, hackers and malware from accessing it.

Storage experts maintain that tape technology remains the most reliable and least expensive ways to retain data in addition to providing the ultimate protection from cyber-attacks.

“IDC continues to see tape as a valuable technology for any storage infrastructure,” said Phil Goodwin, research director, IDC. “Its low cost, secure attributes make it an ideal technology to consider for long-term storage.“

About LTO
The LTO Ultrium format is a scalable, adaptable open tape format developed and continuously enhanced by technology providers Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation (and their predecessors) to help address the growing demands of data protection in the mid-range to enterprise server environments. This high capacity gen of tape storage products is designed to deliver performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.

The LTO Ultrium format has a roadmap for growth and scalability. The roadmap represents intentions and goals only and is subject to change or withdrawal. There is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. The roadmap is intended to outline a general direction of technology and should not be relied upon in making a purchasing decision.

Format compliance verification is vital to meet the free-interchange objectives that are at the core of the LTO Program. Ultrium tape mechanism and tape cartridge interchange specifications are available on a licensed basis.

*Assumes a 2.5:1 compression achieved with larger compression history buffer available beginning with LTO -6 drives.

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