Latest Leapfrog -- IBM, ADIC Agree To Bring LTO Online
December 06, 1999, Issue: 1530
David Gabel
SAN JOSE-IBM Corp.'s Storage Systems Division (SSD), located here, and ADIC Corp., based in Redmond, Wash., have signed an OEM agreement by which each of the companies will buy the other's technology to incorporate into final products.
ADIC will buy the IBM StorageSmart Ultrium Linear Tape Open (LTO) drives from IBM to marry with its automation technology, and IBM will buy the automation technology to marry with its drives. "It's a two-way agreement," says Steve Berens, director of marketing for OEM tape products for IBM's SSD.
IBM says it chose LTO, rather than the more prevalent DLT technology, because the technology has been leap-frogging itself, and "this is the next leap," Berens says. He explains that LTO is unrivaled in terms of performance and throughput. A spokesman for Quantum Corp., the provider of DLT-based drives, says that Quantum welcomes new competition into the market.
The products from this agreement that will emerge, sometime in the first half of next year-and "that doesn't mean June"-says Berens, will be aimed at midrange servers up to enterprise-class machines, where there is an increasing need for tape storage and archival backup. As the Internet grows in importance, so does the need for archival storage.
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