History (1990): Gigatape Finally Gives In and Opts for DDS

Originator of the Data-DAT format, Gigatape GmbH (Puchheim, West Germany) has finally surrendered and has just bought a DDS format license.

It’s probably the beginning of the end of an unfruitful war between two camps, the first one led by Hewlett-Packard and Sony for the DDS, the second one by Gigatape for the Data-DAT.

Of course, this means a great victory for the DDS that will probably become the unique standard for 4mm tape drives based on helical scan technology. The only regret is that Data-DAT offered higher functional possibilities, not only for backing up.

Ever since last Fall’s Comdex in November, it seemed obvious that the DDS was going to establish itself as a main standard.

DEC’s recent announcement on adopting it only reinforced this opinion. Gigatape never denied that it would drop its standard if another one took the lead. The German company’s main vocation is to sell drives, not a recording format.

In fact, the Data-DAT license is free, unlike the DDS one that costs $1,000 for entry fees at $2 per drive.

Officially, Gigatape is not giving up its own standard yet. “Data-DAT aims essentially high-end applications, it can handle data, sound and images, it should then survive, “says a spokesman from Gigatape. “But today’s basic need is for backing up, and for now on we will support the two standards. Around June/July we will offer a two-format drive.“

He also remarked that no Data-DAT drive had been offered yet. Gigatape sells its drives with a proprietary format.

The U.S. firm Identica was the first one to announce a unit, the IDT-2000 that works with the two competitive formats.

Except for Gigatape, all the other manufacturers able to ship (Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Wangtek and WangDAT, for example) are already offering DDS.

Gigatape’s position was turning out to be uncomfortable, even if the company, the first one to ship drives, is the worldwide leader with close to 4,000 units sold at the end of 1989, and even if these figures are far below the company’s founders forecasts.

The firm had to face facts, even if the list of those who adopted Data-DAT was pretty long (Apple, Alps, Cipher, Fujitsu, Hitachi, JVC, Kenwood, Mitsumi, NCR, Panasonic, Sharp, Teac, Toshiba, and Unisys), it wasn’t long enough and its members did not have the same energy as the Hewlett-Packard/Sony gang that includes Aiwa, Alliance Technology, Alps, Archive, DEC, Exabyte, Mitsumi, WangDAT and Wangtek.

The war has come to an end, and is won by Hewlett-Packard and Sony. It’s clear that these two companies will never get involved with Gigatape’s format, even if it does have extra advantages.

Finally, the big have overcome the small who will be satisfied with 5% of the worldwide market, and this victory will only be a benefit to users that should greet a single recording format enabling them to change cartridges from one drive to any other other one.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠25, published on February 1990.