I once thought the notion of tape as the primary backup target being replaced by disk in the data center was not likely for a long time to come. However, data deduplication has enabled this to occur in many data centers over the last few years. There are literally thousands of companies that use disk-based systems as their primary backup solution and tape is secondary. An interesting dynamic occurs when you implement D2D backup - you begin to reduce the importance of tape as a part of the backup process. In many cases tape is just being used but for weekly or only monthly fulls. Additionally - tape is used for off-site storage for long term vaulting. But even this process is being replaced by leveraging remote replication of backups from the D2D backup device to the off-site vaults (e.g. Iron Mountain).
I once thought the notion of tape being reduced and eventually eliminated in the data center was going to take a very long time to occur. But I see it happening at an accelerated rate - in companies of all sizes. There are really big companies that are reducing, big companies that are planning on elimination and many of the SMBs either have or are well on their way to eliminating tape completely. The market indicators support this with IBM tape 2008 sales down 31% and Quantum tape sales down 25% compared to 2007.
I have actually been conservative about the decline of tape, but there is a trend occurring and it is happening at a rapid pace. Tape will exist for the foreseeable future but it will become more and more marginalized - being ultimately relegated to a small part of the market. Certain members of the IT community hold onto things for a very long time - and that will be true of tape - but there will be numerous companies that will move away from tape completely - and there will be new companies that will never use it. Someday soon it will be like when your kids ask you what records and cassettes were. The next generation of business may never know what it was like to backup to tape.
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