The LTO Standard

LTO (Linear Tape Open) technology is the unchallenged leader of the re-invention of tape as storage medium. LTO based solutions have more than 80 % market share in the Midrange or Corporate market segment, and are expanding to take shares in the Enterprise and Low End segments of the market.

The LTO success

The LTO standard was introduced in 2002, and has grown rapidly since the introduction. There are several factors behind the growing success of LTO based solutions:

• LTO based tapes are advanced, quality tapes with high capacity and high speed, ideally suited to accommodate the explosive growth in data storage.
• LTO is an open standard, on offer from several manufacturers, and LTO tape drives from various suppliers are inter-compatible for writing and reading data. This gives the customers two distinct advantages: Secure, long term deliveries and reduced prices because of the competition among manufacturers.
• The big manufacturers have set up a designated LTO committee to cooperate on the development of new versions and control that all manufacturers adhere to the strong demands on compatibility.
• The big OEM customers embraced the LTO standard at an early stage.
• The market was ripe for an open standard. Before the introduction of LTO, there were a great number of proprietary solutions on offer.

Tandberg Storage's LTO Tapes

An LTO cassette contains an half an inch wide tape. Tandberg Storage's version builds on full read-write compatibility with the LTO standard, but the actual tape drive is designed and produced so effectively that its price will also appeal to other parts of the Midrange segment, as well as to other areas where there is substantial demand for competitive pricing together with high quality and high performance.
 
Tandberg Storage is not a member of the inner core of the LTO committee, but the company has a special agreement that secures access to new versions at en early stage, an access that enables the company to be on time with new versions of LTO based solutions.
 
In addition to developing the new LTO tape drive, the company maintains and further develops tape drives based on SLR (Scalable Linear Recording) technology under its contract with Tandberg Data.

More information about LTO is available at: www.lto-technology.com.