According the 2012 Compliance, Governance, and Oversight counsel Summit analysis, a whopping 69 percent of a company's data has no immediate value. This means that the majority of organizations are spending massive amounts of money to make sure that unneeded data is available 24 x 7 via disk.

IT professionals around the world, and the organizational leaders they consult, are often overwhelmed by the idea of making major changes -- such as the adoption of both disk and tape.

There are many that love to assert that "tape is dead" -- however, huge brands such as Google, Yahoo, and Facebook are proving that hybrid data storage solutions (a mix of disk and tape) ARE the answer to the equation.

Not only is tape a reliable backup solution, the Clipper Group recently discovered the average cost of storing archived data on disk is 26 time more expensive than the utilization of an automated tape library.

Thankfully, the last couple of years have seen data tape become highly user friendly. With the birth of the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) as developed by IBM in 2010, writing to tape has become amazingly easy. Gone are the days in which tape users had to run through hours and hours of tape to find an exact piece of data.

More specifically, files on LTO-5 and LTO-6 tape are stored in a similar fashion as disk or a removable USB flash drive. This is extremely attractive to organizations seeking to store unstructured data, especially rich media such as video, digital cinema, and audio. Plus, the high data transfer rates and massive capacities make LTO data tape amazingly efficient.

As provided by the LTO Consortium, other benefits of LTO with LTFS (LTO-5 and LTO-6) include:
• Open Specification
• Portability
• Ease of Use
• Multi-Platform Support
• Reliability and Robustness

In the end, LTO is the very best solution for the 69 percent of data that doesn't have to be accessed immediately. It's cost-effectiveness and reliability make it a surefire winner for 30 plus years of storage.

The secret to developing a cost-effective big data environment is to carefully outline your organization's true needs. Define which data needs to be stored on disk and develop a plan for the long-term storage of data that can be kept offline.

The secret is out – LTO backup tape has made a humungous comeback, as one of the most reliable means of data storage for companies of all shapes and sizes.

Big data (the phrased used to describe when artificial intelligence is amassed in huge blogs within databases) is a huge deal in today’s world. It consists of never-ending Internet histories, social conversations, pictures, videos, and the list goes on.

The growing debate is exactly how the rapidly accumulating masses of data can efficiently be maintained, stored, and secured by companies.
According to a 2011 study, the world collectively created more than 1.8 zettabytes of data. It’s utterly impossible to put into context much data this is, but believe us when we say…it’s a ton!

Each company plays its own role in creating and amassing large amounts of data, which is likely to grow faster and faster as the time progresses.
For a handful of years, disk was thought to be THE technology when it came to all backup needs. When the amount of data grew by leaps and bounds, organizations quickly learned disk is quite expensive. Plus, vicious bugs, worms and hackers quickly proved to be disk’s worst nightmare – leaving organizations vulnerable to attack.

Fast forward to 2013 – now, the majority of leading companies have invested heavily in hybrid systems that consist of both disk and tape. For example, Google and other huge operations utilize disk for daily operations and rely on tape for data backups.
There have been moments (in very recent history) that have seen Google restore lost information with data stored on tape. Not only is tape amazingly reliable in the short-term, its durability makes data available for decades to come.

The majority of data storage experts agree that LTO tape is the past, present, and future of long-term data storage. In fact, the LTO 6 is now available, featuring a massive 35 TB of capacity. This is more than 10 times the amount of the LTO 5.
According to InformationWeek’s Mark Peters, “Despite a constant flow of ‘Tape is dead’ jibes and assertions from non-tape vendors, the technology has refused to die.”

And you can count bet your bottom dollar it will be around for years to come.

Stay tune for more blog postings each and every Tuesday and Thursday!