A big ‘thank you’ to all of you who attended our webinar entitled “Trends in Tape: Looking beyond LTO-5 with LTO-6 and LTFS.”  We had the best attendance ever. This is clearly a topic of great interest to many of you out there.  Bob Cone hosted the call and the discussion was packed with a multitude of great information including LTO-6 and the overall LTO Roadmap.  But more importantly, Bob covered the implications of the roadmap and LTFS and how they fit into the overall storage picture. With so many technologies now available, storage hierarchies and designing and choosing the right building blocks for your environment continues to get more complex.  The presentation distilled much of the vast amount of available information on numerous storage alternatives into an easy-to-understand discussion. Tape, Disk and Solid State Disk / Flash were covered including where they fit now, and where they will fit in the future.  The session was recorded and is available at the link below:

Looking beyond LTO-5 with LTO-6 and LTFS

The webinar underscores how LTO-6 fits into the LTO Roadmap and its important performance and capacity improvements over past generations. It also points out the advantages of LTO-6, which is why you may be interested in Spectra’s LTO-6 Pre-Purchase program. 

How many times have you thought about buying a new car, computer, TV, or cell phone but when you found out a new technology was just around the corner, you waited?  Personally, I need to upgrade my iPhone and considered the current 4S, but am waiting for the iPhone 5. Like me, you hold off and limp along with the old technology, anxiously awaiting the new technology.  Well, when it comes to LTO technology, you don’t have to wait.  Spectra is offering our customers a cost-efficient path to get the latest LTO-5 tape drive technology available today, along with an LTO-6 option, where they will receive an LTO-6 drive to replace the -5, as soon as the LTO-6 is available. 

In addition, this is a great opportunity for customers currently on LTO-3 drives:  LTO-6 drives have read/write compatibility with one generation back (LTO-5) and read only with two generations back (LTO-4).  So, if you have LTO-3 drives and media and want to move to a new generation, you could upgrade to the LTO-6 Pre-Purchase option now, get LTO-5 drives now and replace ALL the LTO-3s, read and re-write the data to LTO-5 media.   Then, when LTO-6s are available through the pre-purchase program (with no additional cost), swap out the LTO-5 drives, and be able to read/write with the LTO-5 media.  Otherwise, if you wait and go straight to the LTO-6 drives, you will need some other way to migrate your LTO-3 media, as it will be unreadable with the LTO-6 drives.

Everything is handled at the time of ordering the LTO-5 drives, so when the LTO-6 is available, we would contact you and find out when you would like us to ship the new drives.  Then you just send the LTO-5 drives back.  And all this is done with no additional paperwork.  The new LTO-6 tape drive will double capacity and provide a 50% increase in performance over LTO-5.  With a larger compression history buffer, the expected compression ratio will go from 2:1 to 2.5:1, so LTO-6 will offer a compressed capacity of 8 TB and data transfer rates of up to 525 MB/second.  The sixth generation of LTO tape drives provides many positive implications for IT and business managers and we are excited to offer you our LTO-6 pre-purchase program: LTO-5 today and the ability to be one of the very first to get LTO-6 and all its advantages when it becomes generally available.
 

by Mark Weis

You are approaching the end of federal buying season (tips here) just as Spectra Logic is wrapping up a record 2011 fiscal year (our CEO’s comments are here.) As a company, we achieved 30 percent overall growth and 49 percent growth in enterprise tape sales. Now is a good time for my annual State of the Union address- to relay what end users are reporting from the field, and share why Spectra Logic Federal revenues grew an astronomical 42 percent over this same time period last year. This combination will supply insight to the healthy contribution that Federal has made to the company’s recent achievements.

1.       IT managers in Federal data centers know it’s not practical to maintain all of their data on costly, constantly spinning disk systems. The power-friendly nature of tape coupled with its cost effective benefits for long-term storage simply make sense.

2.       For those who oversee the “bigger picture”- as in managing the entire data center- archiving on tape is a smart way to reduce your overall IT spend.

3.       High capacity and performance is demanded at data-intensive enterprises and HPC sites within Federal agencies. We’ve seen an increased interest in both subcategories within Federal this past year.

4.       Spectra expanded several partnerships in fiscal 2011, including systems integrators General Dynamics (summary here) Lockheed Martin (press releasehere).

5.       This fiscal year, we’re growing our presence with US Military bases and systems integrators overseas by expanding our Federal program with increased staffing, events and special programs in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. 

6.       We are Federal friendly. Spectra Logic is classified as a small business, we manufacture our storage products in the USA, hold our own GSA schedule, are listed on many federal purchasing contracts, and have developed expertise about your specific needs since we established the Federal division in 2004.

Spectra Logic Federal is currently hiring sales representatives and business development specialists in Boulder, Colo. and Washington, D.C. Current openings can be foundhere.

How can Spectra Logic help you tackle the end of Federal buying season? Contact me directly at markwe@spectralogic.com.

by Mark Weis, VP of Spectra Logic Federal

Spectra recently joined General Dynamics EDGE® Innovation Network, a collaborative, open-environment initiative enabling industry and academia, with government input, to work together to enhance the delivery cycle of new technologies and innovative capabilities to warfighters and first responders. Currently, there are several projects in development at six EDGE Innovation centers worldwide. The projects are intended to improve and enhance warfighter capabilities.

Pete Palmer, EDGE Innovation Network director, said, “The EDGE bridges gaps between end-user needs and current capabilities by promoting rapidly prototyped solutions that could close those gaps quickly. By applying the EDGE process, the government can quickly and cost-effectively review multiple options for users to evaluate in months rather than years.”

So where does Spectra Logic fit in? Spectra Logic Federal delivers data storage and archiving solutions to more than 200 agencies across the USA. Our storage expertise helps agencies solve unique Federal-specific challenges. Spectra’s products are extremely customizable; products in production today. By joining the EDGE Innovation Network, Spectra Logic can utilize EDGE labs to further develop leading-edge technology to meet the specific data storage needs and requests of EDGE end-users by tailoring our flexible storage products based on their hands-on lab experience.

For innovative companies with federal expertise like Spectra Logic, joining the EDGE innovation Network keeps us in sync with what our customers want now, and allows us to add new features in our products to suit these needs. EDGE allows small businesses to display their products in a lab environment, a preferred option for many Federal prospects prior to implementation.

Stay tuned to the Spectra Backup and Recover blog for future Federal updates related to our new EDGE membership and other activities.

I think one of my favorite sayings I heard on more than one occasion and in various different words at SC10 this year was, “It is good to be Spectra!”  I heard this from customers, partners, VARs, analysts and other employees, and it is certainly true.  The tape war is on and by all accounts, Spectra is winning the war one battle at a time.  I heard so many times from so many people that we seem to be the dominant tape company in the market.  Tape is who we are.  It is what we do.  After 31 years of being in business, these truths are starting to manifest themselves in our continued success as a tape company.  The past few years, we have been experiencing much of our success and growth in the High Performance Computing industry not because of tape, but what we can do with tape.  Spectra has committed to continued research and development by investing millions into new features and functionality that are a direct result of our HPC customer requirements. We are therefore able to offer direct benefit and value to them.

SC10 continues to be one of Spectra’s best shows of the year.  This year’s event was no exception.  In addition to learning more about current trends in the HPC market in general, our Spectra executives and team were able to meet with hundreds of our HPC customers and potential customers.

As usual, Spectra was at SC10 in full force.  We had a very nice and large booth with a great location.  In the booth, we showcased a 5 frame T-Finity, T950, T380 and nTier system.  We also partnered with IBM HPSS and had a demo system of their software in the booth, which brought a lot of attention and interest.  Fortunately for us, the competition was nowhere to be found.  I was surprised that there were no other direct competitors at the event with any library systems in their booths.  IDC research shows that the high end HPC market grew by 65% in 2009 and is continuing on that path for many years to come.  Storage contributed to the largest percentage of that growth at almost 10% to just over 3 billion!  In addition to that, they cite that some of the major data center challenges are power, cooling, real estate and system management.  Storage and data management continue to grow in importance.  All these factors and challenges are continuing to increase data centers’ usage of tape, not just for backup, but for near line data archiving.  Through Spectra’s innovations, continued product development and commitment to customer service and support, we will continue to gain market share from the competition and continue to validate ourselves as the market leader.

In the spirit of continuing to be the leader in tape storage, Spectra has a roadmap a mile wide and 2 miles deep.  We continue to innovate, create and incorporate significant enhancements into our products in order to give our customers bigger, better and faster systems that meet their growing demands for performance and scalability.  Much of our continued focus on development is enhancing our T-Finity platform.  By quarter two of next year, we will incorporate the IBM Enterprise TS1130 drive in the T-Finity.  Many of our HPC customers have been anxiously awaiting this feature and we anticipate that the ability to include both LTO and Jaguar drives in our system will be a significant competitive advantage.  In addition to this, we are continuing development of our “fly-over” feature that will interconnect multiple 25 frame T-Finity systems’ allowing scalability that surpasses all other systems on the market today by a long shot!

Our marketing efforts this year were second to none.  We really pushed the active archive message and there was certainly a lot of buzz at the show about it. 

There were analyst meetings with the usual suspects such as IDC and Intersect 360.  They always want to spend time with us to find out what we are up to and it is always good to spend time with them to find out what the market is up to based on their research and findings.  Leigh Grainger always does an outstanding job arranging these important meetings and interviews.

Molly Rector’s speech on “Tape Takes on Mass Storage” had about 120 people in attendance, which was very obvious when our booth began buzzing with activity following her presentation. 

In Summary

The HPC industry is continuing to grow and data storage is the fastest growth component.  We have customers that are already planning on having an Exabyte of data by 2017.  This means that they will continue to double their data storage each year along with other HPC customers.  This explosive and exponential growth is going to demand a large-scale system that can accommodate and manage more data every year in a secure, energy efficient, reliable and space conservative manner.   Spectra understands the growing pains of storage and we are keenly aware of the associated challenges.  This is why we continue to develop products that address the challenges and meet the demanding requirements for data storage.

SC10 in New Orleans:

Best show ever!

Best booth ever!

Best team ever!

Most opportunities ever!

This will, once again, be our best year ever!

It’s that time of the year again. Federal IT administrators are sorting through fall-out funds, small business set asides and overall budgets in a mad race to refresh their data centers with new equipment—all by September 30. Here are a few tips to consider as your year end approaches.
1. Stock up. With extra budget in arms length, it’s a great time to replenish your supply of tapes and drives. It’s a great idea to be prepared in the case of a drive failure or media corruption. Spectra Logic Federal reserves tapes and drives during this time specifically to meet federal buying season needs.
2. Get faster and store more with LTO-5. LTO-5 drives and media are available, and we’ve seen high adoption rates and easy, smooth integration in the field. LTO-3 users can now enjoy a 3.75x increase in tape capacity and a 1.75x increase in throughput on LTO-5; and LTO-4 customers can almost double their tape capacity while enjoying blazing transfer rates up to 1TB/hour compressed to/from tape, all by migrating to LTO-5.
3. Revisit your disaster recovery plan. At the end of a calendar year, we set a New Year’s Resolution. In that spirit, the end of Federal buying season is a good time to revisit, test and revise your DR plan. Planning and preparation is the best advocate to support your continuity of operations (COOP) initiatives.
4. Add Spectra to your wish list. Spectra Logic is classified as a small business, and twenty percent of our overall corporate revenue is generated by Federal customers in more than 200 agencies. Our backup and archive products are manufactured in the USA. We have been listed in the top 10 percent of revenue generators on GSA contract #GS-35F-0563K for three consecutive years, and were recently granted a 5-year contract extension (see our recent press release). In addition to GSA, Spectra Logic is also listed several other federal purchasing contracts, including SEWP, NetCents and ITES-2H, among others.
Spectra knows the challenges that Federal IT administrators face and is here to work with you to create the best backup and archiving plan to meet your agency’s unique needs.  Further questions? Contact me directly at markwe@spectralogic.com. 

Mark Weis

VP, Federal Sales

Spectra Logic is excited to announce our second product of the year award for the Spectra T-Finity tape library. Brian Grainger of Spectra attended the second annual Data Intensive Computing Environment (DICE) Data Intensive Impact Awards event yesterday and accepted the award.

Cheers to our development team. We appreciate the recognition for our continued innovation and dedication to the high performance computing market.

 

Like your grandma’s holiday fruit cake that’s been re-gifted every year since the dawn of time,

I just got back from the Gartner Data Center Conference 2009 in Las Vegas.  It was a good show – then again, can you have a bad show in Vegas?  I mean, it’s Vegas!  Anyhow, there were lots of decision makers roaming around engaged in a plethora of interesting discussions and speaker sessions.

After that, who do you think has to out-run whom when it comes to long-term economic advantage? Leave us a comment on the topic below:

Dear Ms. Meade:
How would an enormous up-front capital expenditure (aka CapEx) for a T-Finity reduce my capital expenditures? By definition, reducing CapEx means spending less, but you're saying if I fork out a lot of money, I'll spend less? Where is that logic? And reduce my operating expenditures? (OpEx)? T-Finity will do all that--is it a toaster and a floor wax, too?

Signed,
Doing Fine With My Powderhorn

Dear Doing Fine:
So glad to hear that things are going well in your world.

Would you be interested in what is going on in the real world?  It turns out that old technology is expensive. Tried to get spare parts for your Model T lately? How about finding truly floppy floppy-disks (the 8x8 inches model) for your Atari?

At some point, it's more expensive to keep old technology, given long-term expenses, than to replace it. Once we talk about replacing something, you are looking at your capital expenses. And the T-Finity does reduce Capex considerably. This part is very straightforward: costs less up-front, doesn't require extra software applications and  servers to run them--in fact, once you buy the T-Finity, you have what you need--partitioning (that's right, no database, no server and no external application, as required by the other very large libraries), encryption (that's right, no external software or hardware as required by the other very large libraries), and remote management (once again, no external anything needed). Right there, you've reduced your capital expenditures compared to the other guys.

Operating expenses falls right into line with this. Didn't I say NO external software, hardware, anything? Those typically  come laden with service agreements and idiosyncratic interfaces.  In my world, that means more parts to manage and to break, more software to learn, and more service agreements to pay. I’m not so sure about your world.

As to the floorwax part--T-Finity lets you use more floorwax, given that it uses so much less data center space. Alternately, you could put some other equipment in the saved space. And the amount of power a T-Finity uses is approximately that used by a toaster--but only when the library is really, really busy, and depending on how you configured it.

The expenses associated with your aging and soon-to-be no-longer-supoported Powderhorn are obvious and inescapable. Sometimes, you have to do the math and face hard financial realities. When that happens for you, please remember that the T-Finity is fabulous. (Yes, Ms. Meade E. Ahmogul gets paid by Spectra, but it's true anyway.)

I do hope you enjoy your Powderhorn and its savings on floor wax (as much as ten dollars). I also hope that, once you switch to T-Finity, you enjoy savings on space, power, and more (savings that will be in the thousands of dollars, even after you subtract the ten dollars on additional floor wax).

Sincerely yours,

Ms. Meade E. Ahmogul