Sales of magnetic tape continue to be strong, even though there are plenty of cloud and on-premises options available, according to the latest figures from industry body. According to figures from the LTO Program, a record 152.9 exabytes (EB) of total tape capacity (compressed) shipped in 2023, with a growth of 3.14% year on year.
► Tape capacity now up to 45TB with target of 1.4PB
► Cost claimed to be 86% cheaper than disk and 66% lower than cloud
The increase was driven partly by rapid data generation and perhaps ironically, the increased infrastructure requirements of hyperscalers and enterprises. The numbers were release by the Linear Tape Open (LTO) technology provider companies – HPE, IBM and Quantum.
The group expects growth to continue as customers look for higher storage capacity, better security and certainty, and enhanced sustainability and value for data storage and backup. The group claims that tape offers an 86% lower TCO than disk and 66% lower TCO than cloud storage over a 10-year period.
One of the LTO’s key tools is a TCO Calculator. The group noted that with AI now being used more., capacity requirements are set to grow even faster, putting more pressure on resources and budgets. The latest version of the tape standard - LTO generation 9 - offers a 45TB compressed tape cartridge, capacity. The group is aiming to cram 1.4 Petabytes (PB) of compressed capacity onto a single cartridge by LTO generation 14.
