LTO Manufacturers

Currently there are four manufacturers of LTO tape drives world wide: IBM, HP, Quantum and Tandberg Storage. .

Tandberg Storage began regular shipments of its LTO2 half height drive in March 2005. Previously, most LTO drives were designed as more expensive full height drives. Since 2005, all 4 LTO drive vendors have introduced half height models, and analysts predict that the volume of half height LTO drives sold every year soon will exceed the sales of full height LTO drives.

Since its introduction in year 2000, the LTO standard has rapidly established itself as the dominant standard for tape drives in the Mid-Range field, and LTO drives are now also taking market shares away from the high end Enterprise field as well as from the Low End field.
LTO based solutions are taking over as the preferred tape drives due to the LTO combination of high quality, high capacity and competitive pricing, plus the fact that drives and media are available from multiple sources. Proprietary solutions rapidly loose ground to the advanced, open standard LTO products.

Since its introduction in 2000, LTO-technology has undergone a rapid expansion, both with respect to capacity as well as to data transfer rates. This place heavy demand on research, development, efficient manufacturing and rigorous quality control in order to stay competitive in this market