LTO Ultrium Sales Increase

SILICON VALLEY, Calif. -- HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation, the three technology provider companies for the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program, today announced that the LTO Ultrium format has shown strong performance during 2007 with double digit sales growth, according to new industry data from IDC. This strong growth is driven by the need to protect data using a best practices approach as well as the security, energy efficiency and low TCO advantages that tape storage offers organizations.

The report shows that total midrange tape drive shipments grew by 10 percent in 2007 when compared to 2006 and LTO tape drive shipments grew 15 percent. According to IDC, over $883.1 million of LTO tape drives shipped in 2007.

The LTO format has evolved throughout each generation to provide ever-higher capacities, ever-higher performance and one of the lowest total cost of ownership propositions for midrange data protection in the industry,” said Robert Amatruda, analyst, IDC. “The LTO share numbers demonstrate that LTO tape continues to thrive, provides a vital, foundational part of a best practices approach to data protection, as well as provides energy savings over disk-only solutions to support green data center initiatives.”

Hewlett-Packard Co.