Quantum points to expansion

Tape library vendor Quantum announced that it will expand into the storage software and disk-based markets.

ANZ country manager, Craig Tamlin, claimed the company was well established as the leading tape storage vendor but it was now time to look to new horizons.

“All we do is back-up and archive hardware,” he said. “There are other opportunities based on our strength in tape, we can offer data protection, not just tape.”

Tamlin would not reveal specifics on planned new products but said its aim was to add value to existing data protection products rather than be the next VA, Symantec or CommVault.

The announcement was not in response to industry criticisms over the future viability of tape as a long-term storage medium, he added.

“We constantly hear that tape is dead so that we should be investing in other things,” he said. “But that’s wrong, tape will be with us for a very long time.”

The vendor also made several additions to its product line up, chiefly the launch of the DLT-S4 tape drive, which complements the vendor’s current LTO3 format drives.

Tamlin said the DLT-S4 drive, at 800GB capacity and 1.6TB capacity compressed, was double the storage of the LTO3 but at the same price.

“We are now segmenting the market,” he said. “The LTO3 will offer performance for high-end SAN and Unix environments while DLT-S4 is in a way, dumbed down for Windows.”

Quantum has also launched a security product focused on backup, recovery and archiving, the DLT Sage Tape Secuity, and a niche professional video storage offering, the SDLT 600A, for the broadcasting and film industries.

Citing IDC research, Tamlin said remote offices, small business data centres, the boom in low-end SANs from vendors like Dell, and tape storage security would be important opportunities in the year ahead.

To that end Quantum has just equipped its drives with password security and was in the process of developing hardware encryption for its future drives, Tamlin said.

“Back up is the focus for a lot of companies, but data recovery is really the issue,” he said. “People will need to be able to pull off multiple versions of data and at a much faster [than tape] speed.”

Tamlin said the new company had been able to defy downward pressure on storage prices, and Quantum’s own products, to deliver more margin for partners.

“Margins have come up across the board,” he said. “The technology has enabled us to create more margin but at a cheaper delivery to market price.”

Its new DLT-S4 drives, with double the capacity of its preceding LTO3 drives, were also available for the same price.

“We are the only vendor who has these drives at the moment so there is naturally more margin for our partners,” he said. “There is no indication when HP, Sun or IBM will offer them.”

The company had also formalised its relationship with Telstra owned SI Kaz, appointing it as a premier VAR. The company joins stable mates Volante, Commander, Alphawest and Dimension Data.

Tamlin said Kaz had been winning good business lately and would enable the vendor to target a new set of top-end of town customers.

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