Choosing an ideal backup solution in the SMB and midrange business space has never been an easy task.
Classically, smaller companies have had to contend with high-end solutions that satisfied their needs, but were out of their price range. Alternatively, they had to choose low-end solutions that were within their price range, but didn`t offer the speed and capacity they wanted. Either way, they generally ended up with a good technology known as DDS, striking the middle ground between the high-end and low-end, while available at an affordable price.
A few years ago, DDS tape technology comfortably addressed this `sweet spot` in the market. However, increasing storage volumes and shrinking backup windows have compelled companies with existing DDS solutions to start looking for an upgrade path.
"For these customers, Sony`s AIT technology has become the best route forward," says Lyndon Blignaut, product manager at Storgate Africa, "offering better capacity, performance and reliability, in a price range that is truly competitive.
"DDS technology currently offers customers backup capacities of between 12GB and 36GB depending on which drive model they make use of. AIT technology, now in its fourth generation, offers customers an entry-level capacity of 20GB and the ability to scale all the way through to 200GB," Blignaut says.
"When it comes to performance, AIT is unrivalled, topping DDS`s 1.2MB/s to 3MB/s transfer rate by offering customers between 6MB/s and 24MB/s, making short work of the ever-shrinking backup windows.
"If we look at reliability, AIT remains the unsurpassed winner," Blignaut continues. "Where DDS has a published mean time before failure (MTBF) of 125 000 POH, AIT offers customers a MTBF of between 300 000 and 400 000 POH, depending on which device is being used. That`s more than double at the low-end and close to triple at the high-end," he enthuses.
But it`s not just these metrics that have customers looking towards AIT as their upgrade path. Blignaut says that right now, the future of DDS technology is unclear, with manufactures committing to keeping the technology alive, but using wider media for when the technology eventually evolves. When this happens, customers will face the prospect of their previous generation of backup media becoming redundant and incompatible.
"AIT on the other hand features full backward compatibility with previous generation consumables and at last count, will carry on evolving to AIT-6, which will offer 800GB of tape capacity and will make its appearance in 2008," Blignaut says.
In terms of what Sony has been doing to meet demands in the interim Blignaut says the company has been truly innovative. "Instead of simply moving through generations of technology at a rapid pace like many other vendors do, Sony has taken the road less travelled and added capabilities to most of the current and previous generations of its AIT products.
"This has resulted in the appearance of `turbo-charged` versions of the AIT-1 (taking capacity from 35GB to 40GB and performance from 4MB/s to 6MB/s) and AIT-2 (taking capacity from 50GB to 80GB and performance from 6MB/s to 12MB/s). These are perfect for users requiring additional storage capacity and performance, but not wanting to transition to newer generations of AIT technology," Blignaut continues.
"At the same time, the company has sensed the need for a more entry-level focused solution and hence, released a solution called AIT-E, which has a native capacity of 20GB and a native transfer rate of 6MB/s," Blignaut says.
"Add to all of this, the fact that AIT - by default - contains the functionality required to allow organisations to comply with governments` recommendations in terms of the storage of information in an un-erasable and un-modifiable format, and virtually all SME and mid-sized businesses have numerous compelling reasons to consider this solution as their primary backup solution," he concludes.
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