Information Week, Behzad Behtash, November 2008
Disks have certainly gotten bigger... but you still need more of them to meet demand, and that means more power and cooling. Significantly larger disk drives also make it seductively easy to put considerable amounts of storage in departmental servers and branch offices... If a branch office needs more storage, it's usually urgent, so you buy more disks. When they need to back up all those disks, you buy that newer, bigger, and faster LTO4 tape drive.

InfoStor, Mark Ferelli, August 2008
The use of encryption, coupled with effective key management, can solve many of the data security requirements in the data center. And a compelling case can be made for tape-based encryption, as exemplified by the encryption scheme used in LTO-4 tape drives.

VNUNET.com, Ian Williams, October 2008
Highlighting its continued stability and growth, LTO is currently in its fourth generation, with LTO-5 on track for release next year and the roadmap for LTO-6 already laid out. Furthermore, LTO-4 has helped address the problem of security by adding hardware-based encryption, which means data is secured as it written to the tape, with key management software now straightforward and simple to use.

Storage Magazine, Rich Castagna, October 2008
For tape systems, LTO is by far the format of choice, accounting for 70% of planned purchases, with about 32% of respondents opting for LTO-2/3 drives in their libraries. LTO-4 adoption, which appeared sluggish at first, seems to be picking up some serious steam; 26% say LTO-4 is their primary format for 2008 drive purchases, more than double the number from just a year ago.

Enterprise Storage Forum, Leslie Wood, August 2008
Thanks to rising energy prices, 'green' data centers are no longer just an environmentally-friendly choice; they're an economic imperative..."Unless your data center is located next to Hoover Dam, this balanced approach of tape and disk allows for maximized overall TCO with low energy consumption," said Bruce Master, IBM's (NYSE: IBM) senior program manager for worldwide tape storage systems marketing for the LTO program.

IT Jungle, Timothy Prickett Morgan, June 2008
The death of tape has been predicted many times in the past, probably as much as the mainframe that it was initially married to. But tape still has its uses, and if history is any guide, will continue to. The Ultrium consortium, the group of tape drive and array makers that is backing the high-density Linear Tape Open (LTO) tape technology that pretty much owns the data center these days, is touting a new report put out by The Clipper Group that compares the cost of disk-based archiving versus tape archiving, including not only the cost of the media itself but also the energy costs associated with using it.

PRISM International, Jerome Wendt, March 2008
...The growing need to encrypt all data sent off-site is becoming one of the biggest, if not the biggest, motivating factor for companies to continue using tape. The inclusion of encryption as part of the LTO-4 tape drive technology has simplified the process of encrypting data as it is stored to tape. Though companies can encrypt data at other points in the backup process, such on the server, on the backup media server or using an appliance, using a tape drive to encrypt the data makes sense since it is fast and it occurs at the exact moment when companies are preparing to send the data offsite.

Broadcasting & Cable, Paige Albiniak and Glen Dickson, March 2008
With Fox's 26 markets just beginning to implement high-definition newscasts, Earl Arbuckle, the Fox Television Stations' VP of engineering, is looking for equipment in almost every possible category..."We also are looking at what some people would term near-line archive storage. For that, we are inclined toward spinning-disk storage as opposed to tape-based. For long-term archiving, we'll stick with LTO [linear-tape open] storage. LTO tape has so much capacity and recording density that with relatively few LTO tapes, you can back up an awful lot of material. It's expensive but not as expensive as spinning-disk storage."

ServerWatch, Drew Robb, January 2008
LTO has evolved into the dominant player, accounting for 88 percent of library unit shipments and 58 percent of library revenue. LTO capacity and throughput grew by leaps and bounds during the past few years. LTO-2 offered 200 GB native and 30-35 MB/s, whereas LTO-3 provides 400 GB and 80 MB/s, and the new LTO-4 delivers 400 GB and 120 MB/s. It is also the first open systems tape drive technology to incorporate native encryption.

Enterprise Strategy Group, September 2007
The beauty of the LTO-4 encryption drive is that it makes encryption cost-effective and transparent (from an ease of use/deployment and performance standpoint)-and provides a roadmap for future generations of LTO Ultrium drives that are planned to include encryption. This is right in line with what our Research tells us users are looking for-and more importantly, what is keeping/has kept them from encrypting data that is stored on tape in the past.

Enterprise Strategy Group, September 2007
We believe tape encryption with LTO-4 products has the potential to become ubiquitous. Just like data compression, users can turn it on and let it do its magic.

Enterprise Strategy Group, September 2007
In March 2006, 25% of respondents to an ESG survey said that they had already deployed tape encryption and another 35% said they hadn't, but were interested in doing so. The availability of LTO-4 encryption will likely serve as a key catalyst for change.

Enterprise Strategy Group, September 2007
There are also potential advantages to performing encryption at the drive-level (versus in the network) with regard to total cost of ownership (TCO), maintenance and training. Think about it. Encrypting in an appliance means more equipment to purchase, implement and manage. With drive-level encryption, this level of complexity and cost is reduced to just the cost of the LTO-4 drive with encryption support.

Enterprise Strategy Group, September 2007
ESG Research shows that encryption is taking a foothold in organizations and tape encryption is on the rise. The availability of LTO encryption should accelerate this adoption.

Ideas International, September 2007
As we look at the hierarchy of storage managed by IT professionals, tape has a solid role in the data center for the foreseeable future, delivering needed backup and archive functions as well as cost savings in hybrid disk and tape backup systems. Tape brings exceptionally strong price/performance benefits while protecting data in a very cost-efficient manner, and the added data security provided by the native tape drive encryption capability of LTO-4 further increases the attractiveness of this format.

Ideas International, September 2007
The considerable momentum of the LTO format shows strong and continuing acceptance of each LTO generation, and there's no doubt that the release of generation 4 solutions will keep the LTO format moving forward.

Ideas International, September 2007
The cost savings from deploying tape over disks for long-term archiving are enormous. According to IDEAS pricing coverage of major storage solution providers, the media (capacity) cost delta to tape plus other major cost factors - such as disk array controllers, network equipment, software, and services - may increase the total cost of a disk-based solution by multiple times, depending on the "class" of the disk array platform (enterprise-class products typically have a more costly pricing structure than midrange products as capacity increases).

Ideas International, August 2007
The introduction of LTO Ultrium generation 4 and its impressive performance, capacity, encryption and WORM functionality provides a proven, top tier solution that addresses the need for a green approach that companies today require, while delivering a highly cost-effective approach for data protection.

Ideas International, August 2007
IT professionals should be consciously aware that the LTO format advantages available to mass IT consumers today did not happen by coincidence. Rather, LTO technology defines a new era in the evolution of linear-tapes; the existence of LTO technology represents a planned and ongoing industry effort with proven-success.

Ideas International, August 2007
Today, many companies are already reaping rewards from their adoption of LTO technology. In light of these benefits, not deploying the LTO format could prove a serious disadvantage. Selecting the right tape technology is crucial for customers in obtaining optimal, long-term returns on investments in data protection and business continuity.

Byte and Switch, Mary Jander, July 2007
Bottom line? Don't count those VTLs before they're hatched, and don't underestimate the ongoing influence of tape backup in enterprise data centers.

NetworkComputing, Howard Marks, June 2007
Aside from vendor pitches and hype, for most organizations the tapeless data center makes as much sense as the paperless bathroom.

InfoStor, Dave Simpson, May 2007
...The introduction of LTO-4 is expected to cement the format's dominance in the midrange tape market. LTO-based tape libraries accounted for approximately 88% of the shipments of mid-range libraries last year, up from about an 84% market share the previous year. That translates into more than 55,000 LTO libraries shipped in 2006 and revenues of about $1.26 billion.

Mesabi Group, Pund-IT, and Infostor, April 2007
To paraphrase Mark Twain, The reports of tape s death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the Linear-Tape-Open (LTO) Program announcement of the LTO Ultrium format generation 4 specifications is evidence that tape technologies are alive and well.

The Clipper Group, February 2007
Tape's low TCO and low energy consumption make it the optimum storage solution for long term data retention.

The Clipper Group, February 2007
Tape is green - not Kermit the Frog green, but environmentally-friendly green. Disk drives continue to spin and need electricity to power and cool the devices whether the device is accessed or not. Tape drives, on the other hand, use little power when not reading or writing tape cartridges. Tape cartridges require no power at all, when residing in an automated library.

The Clipper Group, February 2007
When comparing the acquisition costs of the two systems [SATA vs. LTO-3 tape], the SATA disk systems cost about 6.5 times more than the automated tape system. When adding in space and energy costs, the LTO-3 tape library system cost 11x less than the SATA disk system.

The Clipper Group, February 2007
The cost to power and cool devices cannot be ignored. Electrical costs must be part of the purchasing...and the disk systems cost 25 times more to power and cool than the [LTO] tape system.

The Clipper Group, February 2007
For most data centers located in metropolitan areas, the cost to power and cool devices is a growing concern. If electrical costs continue to rise, then storing older versions on backups or archival data on tape can help to keep energy costs in line.

SearchStorage.com, Jo Maitland, January 2007
The capacity increase to 1.6 terabytes (TB) compressed (doubling the capacity of generation 3) and transfer rates of 240 megabytes per second (MBps) are good news for users undertaking consolidation projects. The storage on a single LTO-4 cartridge is the same as that contained on eight LTO-1 cartridges. However the biggest benefit with LTO-4 is support for AES 256-bit encryption. "It's the first midrange drive to support hardware-based encryption," claimed Rick Sellers, product marketing manager for LTO at Hewlett Packard Co. (HP).

SearchStorage.com, January 2007
The capacity increase to 1.6 terabytes (TB) compressed (doubling the capacity of generation 3) and transfer rates of 240 megabytes per second (MBps) are good news for users undertaking consolidation projects. The storage on a single LTO-4 cartridge is the same as that contained on eight LTO-1 cartridges. However the biggest benefit with LTO-4 is support for AES 256-bit encryption. It's the first midrange drive to support hardware-based encryption...

Infostor, January 2007
The native data rate of 120MBps [for LTO-4] translates to about 864GB per hour, says Bruce Master, senior program manager for IBM's Storage Products Division. This will help users to better manage their backup windows, reduce space consumption in IT centers, enhance library utilization, and reduce the amount of tape handling by people and robotics. However, the LTO-4 spec goes beyond speeds and feeds by incorporating support for more-advanced data-protection and security features.

Infoworld, January 2007
Long a hub for buzz surrounding LTO (linear tape open) topics, [The LTO Program] today is announcing that the specs for the fourth generation of the storage technology are available, right in sync with timing and expectations of LTO's six-generation roadmap. And with LTO 4 cartridges to offer a native capacity of 800GB per reel -- twice that of the previous generation -- the announcement marks a turning point for the technology, which already dominates the mid-tier, holding an 80 percent share on new shipments.

Infoworld, January 2007
LTO 4 will also inherit WORM (write once read many) capabilities from its predecessor, but encryption is the new killer feature that makes the new generation so much more interesting.

Ideas International, January 2007
Is this [LTO-4] announcement significant to IT customers today? Definitively. For customers that still have not standardized on LTO in their storage environments. Market trends have clearly shown a rapid industry adoption of the LTO format. While standardizing on LTO today can lead to competitive advantage, not standardizing on LTO may prove a serious disadvantage, with respect to the many peers/competitors who are benefiting from adopting this technology. For those customers who have been considering switching to LTO but not sure when and how, start planning now for LTO-4 deployments can enable these customers to fully regain their IT competitiveness in data protection operations half a year down the road.

The Clipper Group, September 2006
There's no denying that LTO Ultrium products have established considerable momentum and acceptance in the marketplace. This is a testament to the importance of tape storage and its ability to address user's needs for dependable data retention, data protection and low cost of ownership, as compared to disk.

Freeman Reports, August 2006
Tape is clearly one of the most cost-effective methods for storing data offline in a secure environment. Archiving the data in an unalterable way, such as via LTO WORM, will provide yet another level of assurance and help administrators address compliance regulations.

IDC, July 2006
Tape storage remains a vital component of many companies' data protection and data retention policies. LTO Ultrium continues to gain share among other mid-range tape drive formats, and has been embraced by all major server and storage systems suppliers.

Cohasset Associates, Inc., February 2006
Cohasset's compliance assessment found the LTO Ultrium WORM magnetic tape storage technology provides the features and functionality that either directly meet the relevant requirements of SEC rule 17-a4(f) or allows the requirements to be met.

Chris Mellor, TechWorld, May 2005
Mark Lufkin, Sony Europe General Manager "noted that LTO sales really took off after LTO-2 was announced.  It was as if customers saw that the roadmap was real and that the LTO consortium members really were committed to the format."

Robert C. Abraham, Freeman Reports, Byte & Switch, May 2005
Freeman Scopes LTO-based Tape
"The gains in LTO automation manufacturers' shipments for 2004 were impressive, and there doesn't seem to be any slowdowns in sight.  Based on existing shipment patterns we're seeing, we anticipate that 2005 will be a double digit growth year for the LTO Ultrium tape format in automation." 

Computing, April 2005
"Tape continues to be a multi-format battle, although a growing consensus points to LTO as a leading technology for many enterprise and small business requirements."

IT Week, January 2005
"The LTO Program, which governs the most popular mass storage format backed by IBM, HP and Certance, late last year extended its LTO Ultrium roadmap to add generations 5 and 6, and detail the fixed transfer rate for generation 4."

Mario Apicella, Infoworld, January 2005
Backups at Warp Speed
"LTO-3 also outstrips competing tape standard SuperDLT and leaves even the fastest disk drives in the dust. Throw in 2-to-1 compression , and LTO-3 drives can achieve a practical transfer rate of 160MBps, a dizzying pace."

Alex Woodie, IT Jungle, December 2004
LTO 3 Tape Makes Its Way to Market
"LTO 3 raises the performance bar for high-speed data transfers. With 2:1 data compression enables, LTO 3 drives should be able to push data at up to 160 MB per second, or 576 GB per hour."

Tim Stammer, Storage, December 2004
LTO Tape Slows, Stays Fast
"LTO is already significantly faster than its largest rival, the DLT-S technology made by Quantum Corp. LTO currently enjoys a speed advantage that even the next generation of DLT-S will not wipe out."

Bob Francis, InfoWorld, November 29, 2004
Tape Finds New Life with LTO
LTO drives have caught on as the tape drive of choice, particularly for departments and midsize companies. Last year more that 260,000 LTO drives were shipped, representing a 50 percent increase over 2002, according to Gartner Dataquest.

[According to Peter Gerr, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group] This third generation of LTO is significant because the new systems can read and write to Generation 2 media and read first-generation media. That means IT managers will not have to replace a lot of their backup tapes.

Heidi Biggar, InfoStor, October 2004
Vendors Rev up Next-Gen LTO Drives
In keeping with the projected LTO roadmap, which calls for a doubling of capacity and performance every 18 to 24 months, the LTO-3 specification calls for drives with a 400GB native capacity and 40MBps to 80MBps native data-transfer rate. This compares to Quantums Super DLT (SDLT) 600 drive, which has a 300 GB native capacity and a 36MBps native data transfer rate.

In addition to the capacity/performance advantage, shipments of LTO drives continue to outpace shipments of SDLT drives. According to Freeman reports, a tape market research firm in Ojai , CA , 59% of super drives shipped last year were LTO, 34% were SDLT, and 6.5% AIT/SAIT.

InfoStor, September 23, 2004
Tape is Dead. Long Live Tape
In Europe, the big resurgence is in the midrange tape market, which grew 13% in 2003. In the midrange market (which includes LTO, DLT, AIT and 8mm Mammoth formats) LTO is the big winner, taking market share from DLT and SDLT. This led in large part to an impressive 21% increase in midrange tape revenues in 2003.

Dave Simpson, InfoStor, August 27, 2004
Tape Trends: LTO Gaining Momentum
"The hottest growth segment of the compact tape market is in the so-called 'super drives' which included LTO, SDLT and SAIT. And among those, LTO has the most momentum in terms of end-user adoption."

[According to Freeman Report's Compact Tape Outlook report] "LTO drive shipments jumped from 175,000 units in 2002 to 262,000 in 2003, while shipments of SDLT drives increased from 109,000 units in 2002 to 152,000 units in 2003."

"Abraham attributes LTO's success primarily to a time-to-market advantage. For example, LTO-2 drives began shipping in early 2003 with performance and capacity advantages over SDLT; while Quantum didn't ship its next-generation SDLT 600 drives until very late in 2003. As such, LTO had a banner year in 2003."

Jeffrey Schwartz, VAR Business, August 23, 2004
Unraveling Tape's Future
"LTO is clearly the fastest-growing tape format in recent years. Having first hit the market a few years ago, LTO is a standard format developed by a consortium of vendors led by HP, IBM and Certance (the tape division spun off from Seagate). The second generation of LTO systems came out early last year. LTO 2-based tape drives have a capacity of 400 GB and a compressed transfer rate of 40 MBps to 80 MBps. The vendor consortium is currently putting the final touches on the LTO3 spec, which is expected to double that capacity- 800 GB and 80 MBps to 160 MBps, respectively."

Mass Storage News, August 19, 2004
SDLT and LTO Continue to Lead the Compact Tape Market
"Another trend is the continued strong performance of LTO. LTO was the only technology that was not severely affected by the economic downturn, and the only one that seemed to recover quickly."

"LTO is now the leading tape technology in the growing midrange, open systems market space." [According to Bob Abraham of Freeman Reports] "The growth of LTO is expected to keep up with the growth in that market it is serving. LTO has been outshipping SDLT by about a two-to-one ratio. LTO is simply the favored choice of tape users in that environment."

"With LTO-3 now hitting the market, the need for an automated SDLT 600 solution will be lessened."

Joe Maitland, SearchStorage.com, July 27, 2004
LTO-3 licenses on the loose
"The LTO-3 format doubles storage capacity over Generation 2, increasing to 400 GB native capacity (800 GB assuming a 2:1 compression). While transfer rates improve to 40-80 MBps (80-160 MBps, assuming the same compression rate). LTO-3 drives are backward-compatible for read-and-write capability with Generation 2 cartridges and backward-read capable with Generation 1 cartridges."

Computer Business Review, July 21, 2004
[According to StorageTek CEO Pat Martin] "Quantum's share of the open Systems tape drive market, based on its SDLT drives, is being eaten into by the rival LTO drives supplied by Certance, Hewlett Packard and IBM... We're selling five to seven times as much LTO as SDLT, and we've seen a 25% growth in LTO sales. It's clear that LTO is gaining share."

Mark Lewis, SearchStorage.com, July 12, 2004
Get Ready for the Next Greatest Thing in Tape Technology - LTO3
[According to Bob Abraham of Freeman reports] "In 1998, the LTO-consortium laid out a target specs roadmap for LTO-1 through LTO-4. The consortium has been right on target with both capacity and performance points for LTO-1 and LTO-2. I think the consortium is reviewing the target specs to decide what the final specification of LTO-3 will be. They are doing this with some internal analysis and more importantly they are keeping a pulse on the market"

Kevin Komiega, Search Storage.com, June 28, 2004
Users Changing Tape Technologies
"The trend toward the centralization of tape is lending itself to the so-called 'super drives,' including LTO, SDLT and SAIT drives. Super drives accounting for 22% of all tape shipments and 59% of all revenues in 2003, up from 14% and 45% in 2002, respectively. [Bob] Abraham [of Freeman Reports] projects that LTO, SDLT, SAIT and high-end 8 mm drives to make up 46% of unit shipments and 77% of tape revenue in 2009."

Ben Freeman, ServerWatch, June 1, 2004
Hardware Today Beyond Basic Backup Needs
"Dissatisfaction with SDLT's predecessor is one reason for LTO's success"

[According to Gartner Vice President and Research Director Nick Allen] "Depending upon when you measure it, LTO is outshipping  DLT/SDLT 2-to-1 or 1.5-to-1. In my user base, somewhere between 75 percent and 80 percent of the DLT users were fundamentally unhappy."

Kevin Komiega, SearchStorage.com, April 1, 2004
(Also appeared on eWeek)
LTO Leads Tape Library Rebound
"A recent study from Freeman Reports focused on the tape market, shows that adoption of the LTO format is pulling the tape library industry out of an economic slump despite the arrival of low-cost disk drives as an alternative to tape backup."

[According to Freeman Reports analyst Robert Abraham] "LTO libraries made gains in virtually every market segment in 2003, particularly offsetting the combined declining shipments and revenue of other categories. LTO library shipments topped all other category shipments for the first time in 2003 and LTO revenue topped all other categories for the first time in 2003."

Ed Miseta, Mass Storage News, February 5, 2004
Can Frauenfelder Breathe New Life Into DLT?
"There is no question that LTO remains a credible threat to the success of SuperDLT... According to several analyst forecasts, LTO is projected to continue to erode DLT's drive revenue. The 2003 Compact Tape Outlook from Freeman Reports states that drive sales revenue of all DLT products in 2002 exceeded those of LTO by 5%. By 2008, LTO's drive revenues are expected to surpass those of DLT by 4%."

"Quantum has posted a loss in each of its last five quarters... Analysts often blame the losses on excess capacity in the media market as well as market share losses to LTO. While media prices may recover, market share loss to LTO will most likely be permanent."

Jack Fegreus, InfoStor, February 2004
Super Tape Shoot-Out: SDLT vs. LTO
"Starting with the first generation of LTO Ultrium tape drives, at least when it came to performance the difference between Ultrium and SDLT was, to say the least, dramatic. Even when Quantum released SDLT 320, which barely managed to catch up to the first generation of LTO Ultrium drives, the Linear Tape Open consortium released the second generation of Ultrium - once again leaving SDLT trailing far behind in performance."

Todd Spangler, Baseline, January 16, 2004
Quantum: Losing a Step
"On the drive side, Quantum has faltered as well, as its SDLT technology has trailed the capacities and speeds offered by Linear Tape Open technology. Quantum's drives are now in the same ballpark as the current generation of LTO with the recently introduced SDLT...but clearly, Quantum has lost some cachet."

Carol J. Kelly, The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2003
"(R.W. Baird analyst Daniel J.) Renouard cited concern over Quantum's continued market share loss to the LTO Consortium - a group of tech firms including (Certance), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) that developed new tape drive products using linear tape-open, or LTO, technology."

Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News, November 13, 2003
Belluzzo's Quantum Leap
"Brion Tanous, an analyst at Merriman, Curhan, Ford & Co., said the LTO consortium represents a real threat to Quantum's tape sales, which [account for] half of Quantum's business. 'We think Quantum is experiencing an irreversible market share loss,' Tanous recently wrote in a report."

Todd Spangler, Byte and Switch, October 14, 2003
Quantum Seeks SDLT Salvation
"Over the past two years, Quantum has lost a significant share to LTO, a technology jointly supported by Certance LLC, Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM. The LTO consortium has been able to beat Quantum to market with delivering greater capacity and performance."

Lucas Mearian, ComputerWorld, September 1, 2003
(Tape Formats: Choosing the Right Format)
"Even with software advances in SDLT, more users are buying LTO-2 drives these days.  Bob Abraham , an analyst at Freeman Reports in Ojai, Calif., says LTO-2 appeals to users because its open architecture offers a choice of vendors."

"John Pearring, president of StorServer Inc. in Colorado Springs , a manufacturer that sells all three tape technologies, still gives LTO the edge.  'LTO is open and makes more sense, and its 200GB native vs. 160GB for the latest SDLT 320 drives,' he says."

Ed Frauenheim, CNET News.com, July 22, 2003
(Storage Tape Format Hits Milestone)
"More than 10 million data storage tape cartridges with the Linear Tape-Open Ultrium format have been shipped since late 2000, a group of companies behind the standard said Tuesday. The announcement, from a consortium of Certance, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, is a sign that the LTO Ultrium format may be making headway against rival technology from Quantum. LTO Ultrium cartridges hit the market in September 2000 and shipments had climbed to 5 million as of December 2002."

Henry Baltazar, eWeek, June 9, 2003
(Tape Drive Showdown)
"With LTO-2 doubling its capacity to 200GB per tape native and speeds to 35MB, the SDLT 600 will have to be a big improvement over the SDLT 320 to stay competitive in the tape market."

Elliot King, Windows NT Magazine, March 10, 2003 
(Tape Capacity Wars Heat Up)
"Part of LTO's strength came from its well-publicized technology road map.  Second-generation LTO drives debuted in [late] 2002.  Two more generations are on the drawing board."

Jeanne Lim, Asia Computer Weekly, March 3, 2003
(Shipment in Super Tape Drive Doubled in 2002)
"The competition between SDLT and LTO continues to brew.  LTO proponent Jalin Anderson, who is also managing director of Exabyte Asia Pacific, pointed out that Quantum had been late to market SDLT to its detriment.  'Today LTO is shopping globally at a ratio of 2:1 to SDLT. Many customers couldn't wait for SDLT and migrated to LTO,' Anderson said."

Kevin Komiega, SearchStorage.com, January 24, 2003 (Tape Market Bounces Back)
"When all was said and done, LTO drive shipments, which had started more than six months earlier than Super DLT shipments, jumped to a dominant position in 2002."

Elliot King, Windows NT Magazine, March 10, 2003 (Tape Capacity Wars Heat Up)
"According to Bob Abraham , market researcher and president of Freeman Reports, twice as many LTO drives as SDLT drives shipped in 2001 -- a year in which LTO was the only tape category to show revenue growth. Part of LTO's strength came from its well-publicized technology road map. Second-generation LTO drives debuted in April 2002.²

Heidi Biggar, InfoStor, June, 2003 (LTO gaining ground in tape market)
"While the economy impacted virtually all segments of the tape library market last year, some were affected more than others. In particular, newer technologies like LTO fared better than technologies such as DLT."

"When the economy goes south, leading-edge technologies aren't affected as much as older technologies," says Bob Abraham , author of the recently published Freeman Report, 2003 Tape Library Outlook.

Rich Peterman, Mass Storage News, December 5, 2002 (LTO Bites Back As Gen 2 Drives Ship)
"The open standard and multiple vendors supporting LTO guarantee not only choice, but also endurance of the technology... Customers are practically guaranteed their drive and library investments will not be lost."

Rich Peterman, Mass Storage News, October 3, 2002 (Gear Up For Ultrium: The Next Generation)
"There's a pent up demand for the next generation of LTO. There will be a tremendous surge in LTO next year assuming vendors can wrap up [development] and deliver drives quickly."

"Introducing LTO as an open standard has been beneficial to its adoption," adds Freeman's [Robert] Abraham. "The open LTO standard has allowed multiple vendors to manufacture drives--compared to only [two companies] manufacturing DLT drives."

Kevin Komiega, SearchStorage.com, October 2, 2002 (LTO thrives despite down market, LTO2 on the way)
" ... According to a new report, the growing demand for Linear Tape-Open (LTO) ... could be the silver lining to the dark cloud of decline. And now a new generation of LTO tape technology is expected to fuel the segment further. Freeman Reports' latest (2002) Compact Tape Outlook states that last year revenue was down in every category except LTO, which showed a whopping 280% gain."

"'Within the network storage space, LTO was the biggest success story in 2001, making significant gains against all competing tape technologies,' said Bob Abraham , president and analyst for Freeman Reports, which is based in Ojai, Calif. The shift from other forms of tape technology to LTO is a result of users moving from desktop backup to network backup, he said."

Leslie Wood, Enterprise Storage Forum, September 2002 (What Happened to Accelis?)
"The fact that three fierce competitors would get together to collaborate on a technology might have seemed odd, but in the face of stiff competition from other proprietary tape formats such as DLT, the LTO initiative was established as a response to the market's need for an open format... LTO products as a whole are a remarkable piece of cooperative engineering between three of the industry's most fierce competitors... From the beginning, Ultrium was quick to catch on, and has continued its growth and acceptance in the industry to the point where it now garners about a 70 percent market share."

Heidi Biggar, InfoStor, May 2002 (Tape Library Shipments Rise, Revenue Dips)
"Just as no one could have forecast the impact the economy would have on tape library sales last year, no one could have predicted the run that the LTO Ultrium format would have in its first full year of shipments."

"LTO libraries took market share from every competing technology in virtually every market segment," Said Bob Abraham of Freeman Reports. "LTO was the only category with growth in 2001, which more than offset the combined declining shipments of all other categories."

Storage Magazine, April 1, 2002 ("Quantum Clarifies SDLT Roadmap")
"It was the lack of a product roadmap, which pushed some longtime DLT users over to the competition. Jordan Grand Prix, the UK-based Formula One racing company, migrated from DLT to LTO last September. According to Jordan IT technician, Adrian Collinson, one reason Jordan chose LTO was for the 'definite roadmap, which just wasn't there for DLT.'"

"LTO is the way forward - multiple vendors, multiple offerings and compatibility between vendors. How can a proprietary standard such as DLT compete?" - From a survey of end users conducted by Storage Magazine.

Ed Miseta, Mass Storage News, January 17, 2002 ("Ultrium Continues to Increase Market Share")
"The LTO consortium has entered its second year in the storage industry with an announcement that it has shipped the one millionth Ultrium tape cartridge. The technology appears to be on track to meet its goal of capturing 50% of the compact tape market. The announcement is a significant milestone for LTO, and illustrates the storage industry's endorsement of the Ultrium product as well."

Michael Alexander, TechTarget.com, January 4, 2002 ("Web Site Chooses LTO for Speed")
"LTO media can natively store 100GB of data or 200GB when the data is compressed. 'We are able to backup a one-plus terabyte database to 12 tapes for a single backup versus 40. In addition, we found that the LTO drives can backup data at a rate of 9.8MB per second per drive versus 4.7MB of data per second per drive on the DLT drives,'" said Tom Barclay, lead developer for the TerraServer Web site project.

Francis Chu , eWeek, December 3, 2001 ("What Does LTO Have That DLT Doesn't?")
"What does LTO have that can attract IT managers to switch from DLT or SDLT? For one thing, LTO is an open tape standard. DLT/SDLT, on the other hand, is proprietary to Quantum. This means that more companies are developing drives for LTO, and IT managers will have more choices when selecting drives for tape libraries."

Sarah Arnott, Computing, November 22, 2001 ("Tape Standards War To End")
"Compaq clearly leads the mid-range tape automation market. If the HP/ Compaq merger goes ahead, then HP will push LTO Ultrium tapes through Compaq. Things will change dramatically," said IDC analyst, Zarah Damji.

Sarah Arnott, Computing, November 22, 2001 ("Tape Standards War To End")
"LTO is leading because SuperDLT doesn't have the backing of a big consortium. If the HP/Compaq merger goes ahead, then Compaq will be selling Ultrium as well," said Josh Krischer, vice president and research director, Gartner.

Simon Quicke, Microscope, November 20, 2001 ("LTO Standard Held Up As Example")
"The success of the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) standard has been held up as an example of how co-operation can work in the storage world."

Jon William Toigo, Unisphere, October 19, 2001 ("A Tale of Two Tapes: The Many Challenges of DLT")
"While it would be easy to cast Ultrium simply as a DLT competitor, it is more appropriately described as an entirely new approach to tape that integrates the strength of other tape products. In fact, few Ultrium vendors anticipate a mass migration away from DLT Tape to Ultrium in established DLT shops. Rather, they expect a long-term win for Ultrium as the limits to DLT and its successor Super DLT are realized."

Mark Ferelli, Computer Technology Review, September 1, 2001 ("Merger Mania is all Thumbs")
"Hewlett-Packard, along with IBM and Seagate, is part of the tripartite leadership supporting Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Technology in the midrange tape market. They are an active part of the administrative team, and are selling product under exceptionally competitive circumstances."

Bob Abraham , Freeman Reports, August 17, 2001 ("Demand for Tape Drives Being Driven by SAN Adoption")
"Ultrium ...was jointly developed by IBM, Seagate and HP. They saw the success they were going to continue to have for years and the three companies saw the opportunities and decided on a joint initiative, a common effort in terms of format, cartridge and interchange."

Mario Apicella, InfoWorld, August 6, 2001 ("Tape Drives for Terabytes")
"With more than 1.5 million DLT tape drives installed, Quantum is the undisputed leader in the midrange market, but competition from Ultrium devices could erode that supremacy."

"Ultrium could replace the many incompatible media formats of the midrange market with a common, scalable, and open technology. We expect the many tape drive manufacturers that have licensed LTO Technology to challenge the de facto supremacy of Quantum with competitive pricing and captivating technical features."

Headline of Press Release: Quantum/ATL Announces Availability of LTO Ultrium - June 19, 2001
Appeared on CiscoWorldMagazine.com
"We are excited that we can now add LTO Ultrium drives to our family of library products," said Steve Reichwein, product manager for Quantum/ATL. "LTO Ultrium technology offers interchangeability among LTO Ultrium drives and is a long-anticipated addition to the enterprise storage market."

Ed Miseta, Mass Storage News - June 7, 2001
"People are ready to embrace a totally new tape format. I think LTO is definitely appealing, and it is going to be a successful format. IBM, HP, and Seagate put a lot of investment dollars into the development of LTO. It's a good product, it is starting to take off, and it is definitely here to stay." Rich Gadomski, director of marketing for Maxell.

Ed Miseta, Mass Storage News - May 17, 2001
"IBM and HP can make LTO successful just in their captive servers. If they get a Dell or a Compaq to jump on board as well, then they have it made." - Kelly Scharf director of product marketing, Plasmon as appeared in Mass Storage News May 17, 2001 .

"I think LTO is a good tape technology. I also think it will win over SuperDLT. SuperDLT is late. This will enable LTO to get a foothold before SuperDLT hits the market." Annette Smith, manager of marketing communications for Exabyte.

Headline of Press Release: Imation Introduces New High Capacity Black Watch Ultrium Tape Cartridges - May 2, 2001
"With the emergence of more complex storage networking architectures, companies are looking for flexible storage solutions that perform well in both stand-alone and automated environments," said Fara Yale, chief analyst, Gartner Dataquest. "A robust, reliable and affordable tape format with great capacity and speed is one of the ideal solutions for supporting today's data-intensive demands."

"Imation's entry into the Ultrium-format tape cartridge market marks another major step in the growth and adoption of LTO technology and in particular, support for Seagate's Viper® family of Ultrium-format products," said Larry McMannon, general manager of Seagate Removable Storage Solutions. "Imation's reputation in the network market and their commitment to the Ultrium format further supports the format's position of becoming the midrange tape technology of choice."

"Imation brings nearly 50 years of removable media development and manufacturing expertise to the new Ultrium storage platform," said Steve Ladwig, president of Imation Data Storage and Information Management. "Imation's leadership in servo writing and precision cartridge manufacturing helps the Ultrium system achieve its groundbreaking combination of high capacity, high performance and outstanding reliability. This is the first in four generations of Ultrium tape cartridges we will develop, each designed to help customers keep pace with their ever-growing data storage needs."

Headline of Press Release: Seagate Bundles BakBone's NetVault As Backup/Restore Software For Its Viper LTO Drives - April 9, 2001
"Before enterprises pay for a new tape drive, they want assurance that they will be able to extract full performance from it while performing their backup/restore operations," said David Hill research director, storage and storage management with the Aberdeen Group. "The strong combination of Seagate's Viper LTO tape drive and BakBone's NetVault backup/restore software takes new steps toward providing the 'pay for performance' enterprises demand."

Headline of Press Release: Vogon International and Hewlett-Packard target data recovery and conversion services for the LTO market - April 9, 2001
"The LTO products are a remarkable piece of cooperative engineering between the industry's leading peripheral manufacturers and in HP's products they have developed outstanding tape peripherals," said Gordon Stevenson, Vogon's managing director. "We have effortlessly integrated these with our own computer evidence products to provide evidence gathering at over 1GB per minute."

Headline of Press Release: Exabyte Announces New Addition to LTO Tape Library Roadmap; Exabyte's 221L Gives Users 2.1 TB Native Capacity at 108 GB Per Hour - March 20, 2001
"Our LTO Ultrium tape libraries appeal to customers who want the combination of Exabyte reliability and a linear technology with high scalability, performance and capacity," said Ken Cruden, director of marketing for Exabyte.

Headline of Press Release: Neartek Makes LTO Tape Technology Available For IBM S/390; Vsengine Brings LTO - March 2, 2001
"LTO has all the features to become the long awaited tape technology standard," said Cyril Chiche, Vice President of Marketing for Neartek. "It's fast, captive, cheap and has mainframe-class reliability. The Vsengine allows the LTO to become the technology of choice for companies that have different platforms to consolidate their tape storage management," said Chicse.