IBM ships 2001st virtual tape server

By Basheera Khan for IBM

Johannesburg, 11 Jul 2001

IBM South Africa has shipped IBM`s 2001

^st

virtual tape server (VTS) to T-Systems Southern Africa, a division of the Germany-based T-Systems Group and provider of professional consultancy and outsourcing services worldwide.

The 2001st VTS, to be implemented in a peer-to-peer environment, is currently being installed at a T-Systems datacentre to support the tape processing requirements of its customers.

Dietmar Wendt, VP of IBM`s EMEA Storage Solutions Group, comments: "For IBM, the shipment of the 2001st VTS to T-Systems highlights the success of VTS."

"This is a big breakthrough because ... ten years ago IBM nearly decided to go out of the tape business."

The peer-to-peer VTS provides a virtual tape processing solution that can provide enhanced availability or significantly improve the disaster recovery process. The system is an evolution of the IBM VTS, which addressed the inefficiencies of tape processing in large enterprises when it was first introduced in 1997.

Wendt say that mirroring data in the tape environment is a relatively new trend.

"Many customers are doing the same thing in the disk environment, but IBM customers with our products have the ability to do the same in the tape environment. And as you know tape data is as critical as that on disk storage."

T-Systems will be implementing the peer-to-peer VTS as a replacement for its installed tape equipment at its Cape Town office.

Johann Bauermeister, business manager computing services at T-Systems, notes: "What separates the peer-to-peer VTS from other vendor`s solutions is the system`s ability to create a copy of the volumes at the subsystem level with zero impact on host resources. With this new implementation we are prepared now for the unexpected outage as well as the planned outage, such as maintenance."

Wendt says IBM is winning 70-75% of the high-end tape business in the EMEA market space.

"Tape is a very good business to be in for IBM - in the last quarter we`ve made significant progress in the tape market space, not just in the high-end space, but especially in the low-end business."

With its new LTO product range, Wendt says, the vendor has gained a lot of traction and momentum in the EMEA market space.

"It`s already contributing a significant amount of revenue towards our business; the LTO business makes at least 25 - 30% of our tape business as of today. With the LTO product family, we are clearly attacking the proprietary closed DLT market."

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