By Owen Ferguson

Yet another backup hardware company has decided to support the Ultrium open standard technology. Exabyte, a backup automation and robotics company, announced at Comdex last month in Las Vegas that it will be releasing a line of Ultrium-based products.

The standard was developed by a consortium consisting of IBM Corp., Seagate Technology Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The format is an implementation of LTO (Linear TapeOpen) technology optimized for high capacity, performance and reliability, the companies claim.

Boulder, Col.-based Exabyte Corp. plans to release products ranging from single-drive autoloaders to multi-drive library units. The libraries will have capacities ranging from two to 21TB, with transfer rates ranging from 108 to 648 GBph.

The units will be upgradeable to include additional management tools like barcode scanners and cartridge memory readers, as well as the ability to load cleaning and diagnostic cartridges into the libraries, to automate these processes as part of the regular duty cycle. It expects to have the full line available by the summer of 2000.

But why has Exabyte embraced this open standard technology? Teri Grover, business line manager for the storage, automation and solutions division at Exabyte, explains that although the company has traditionally focused on automating its own proprietary backup standards (Mammoth and Mammoth 2 tape solutions), it is also concerned about being a player in the larger, nonproprietary tape automation market.

"One of Exabyte's missions is to automate all leading or soon-to-be-leading storage technologies," she says. "For a long time we were really just an 8mm company, but we saw the opportunity in automation that came from other technologies." According to Grover, the switch to the new technology was, in large part, a response to customers who liked Exabyte's approach to automation but were looking at taking advantage of some of the benefits of Ultrium technology.

Tim Weir, senior product manager of Exabyte's storage, automation and solutions division, says the company's decision to support the standard was based not only on a foreseeable demand, but also on the encouragement of Ultrium's founding consortium. "We've been looking at LTO for quite a while, knowing that it was coming, but it was also the members of the consortium, as well as Fujitsu outside of the consortium, that actually approached Exabyte to incorporate LTO into automation," he says.

Both Grover and Weir seem optimistic that the new format, with its strong industry backing, will be successful. "We certainly think that LTO has a good opportunity for success. Why do we think that? A couple reasons — obviously the players, particularly HP and IBM. Certainly, if anybody can make a success of the product it will be those two players," says Grover. "Secondly, from our perspective there are a lot of people looking for an alternative to DLT (an older tape standard) in the high-capacity, high-performance space. And there's a lot of doubt surrounding Super-DLT right now."

Although Exabyte will be shipping solutions based around a single vendor's tape drive (yet to be chosen), it will offer the flexibility for customers to install other vendors' tape drives. "Even once a primary vendor is chosen (by Exabyte), we are poised to go with a customer wish if they want to go with another LTO vendor. We have that flexibility in our product to incorporate all four (vendors' tape drives) later on," he says.