RDX continues to meet the customer segment that demands more capacity and automating of that process, says IDC's Robert Amatruda. "Having a system to extend that beyond the single cartridge is important, and with any removable media you do need a way to manage. When you move it to an automated or system environment it can be a little easier. That's why customers make the jump from a single tape drive to a system."
The whole concept behind RDX is having standards and standardized media that you can use to recover, restore and safeguard your data beyond your system, he adds. In fact, Amatruda is very positive about the foreseeable future of removable media, with new technologies and file system support coming out. "It opens the door to verticals that consume quite a bit of capacity, which hard disks don't really address. Even with the advent of cloud, it's really about recovery of data."
Arun Taneja of technology analyst firm the Taneja Group agrees that while the tape market is declining, enterprises of all sizes, but especially the larger ones, are continuing to use tape, either for compliance reasons or for internal political reasons or both. "Small companies are the ones that want to get away from tape as fast as possible. The reasons are clear. These small companies have little or no specialized expertise in IT. In other words, even if they have one or a few IT people, they are often generalists and not specialists. They want simple, easy-to-understand products that don't require a PhD to run. Tape has been a monster for these types of customers."
This is where the QuikStation comes into play, he explains. "Disk-based backups are faster and more reliable. Removability means they act like tapes and can be taken out and stored for safekeeping. No electronic replication is needed. Small to midsize companies, lower end or midsize, often don't have another site to which they can replicate. So removable disks are preferred. That is the sweet spot for the QuikStation product. Speed and reliability of disk, removability of tape."
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