The Fujifilm Recording Media USA (FRMA) Conference in San Diego recently drew IT and cloud storage giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and IBM together. They unanimously championed tape storage and archiving as indispensable for securely and cost-effectively managing massive data volumes.
Rich Gadomski, FRMA’s Tape Evangelist, emphasized the strategic importance of tape storage amid the data explosion. While disk storage addresses short-term needs, tape remains crucial for efficiently moving, storing, and archiving data.
Industry leaders from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Meta, and IBM lauded tape as the most reliable, cost-efficient, and secure archiving solution. Notably, AWS, though silent on their storage media, is widely speculated to heavily rely on tape technology.
According to Nikhil Jain of Microsoft Azure Storage, tape remains the most cost-effective storage medium. Meta’s Qingzhi Peng highlighted the complementary roles of tape, hard disk drives (HDDs), and flash technology across data tiers.
Analyst Fred Moore delved into the role of tape in the zettabyte era, projecting a storage volume of 11.7 ZB by 2025. He emphasized the necessity of tape for hyperscalers managing vast data centers, citing tape’s pivotal role in enabling growth, controlling costs, and enhancing cybersecurity.
Moore recommended maintaining multiple data copies on diverse media types, with one copy stored offsite and another with an air gap, predominantly using tape cartridges. He underscored tape’s energy efficiency, scalability, and vital role in combatting cyber threats.
Steffen Hellmold from Twist Bioscience introduced synthetic DNA as a potential long-term data storage solution. While conventional magnetic storage faces scaling challenges, synthetic DNA boasts significantly higher data density, albeit still in early stages of development.
The evolving landscape of data storage, marked by the rise of hyperscalers and the ongoing data explosion, underscores the enduring relevance of tape technology. As organizations navigate the complexities of data management and security, tape storage emerges as a stalwart solution offering reliability, cost-effectiveness, and scalability in an increasingly data-driven world.
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