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In my briefing with Spectra Logic, during the last Powering the cloud event, was with Steve Mackey, Vice President International at Spectra Logic. I’ve met him also last year during the past event so was the opportunity know what has changed in the last months.

Compared to other storage companies met during this event, this is one with a long history (over 30 years of experience in storage) and it well known in the US, but honestly not the same in EMEA (or at least not in Italy) and, in fact, one of their mission is increase the market share in EMEA.

The company design and deliver innovative data protection through tape and disk-based backup, recovery and archive storage solutions.

The focus on tape technologies could seems strange (several people are considering backup to tape dead or at least replaceable by VTL) but it make sense in a world where several company are still using this approach (usually integrated with others). Tape are used mainly for archiving (for big data), with long term and integrity check, very high storage density and for very large customers. And the numbers from Spectra Logic confirm the interesting (also) in the tape world: they have a +9% year on year sales increase with a +14% about enterprise tape libraries sales!

This does not mean that all their products are tape based (or at least not only tape based). There are also some interesting appliance like the Spectra BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance enables users to easily store massive data forever at virtually no cost. Designed for organizations where data is a significant part of their operations, BlackPearl allows data to move seamlessly into mass tape storage in a way not previously possible. BlackPearl enables users to deploy a tier of deep storage that is cost effective, easy to manage and scalable to Exabytes of data. With BlackPearl’s simple RESTful DS3 interface and embedded tape management software, organizations will confidently store all of their data forever at costs as low as pennies per Gigabyte.

This new interface, DS3, is built upon the wildly successful S3 interface created by Amazon. Spectra Logic has added the capability of S3 to now leverage sequential media and portable media and announced the DS3 (Deep Simple Storage Service) interface.

For more information about the BlackPearl appliance see also this post.

On the tape side, they are also building innovative solutions. For example with Spectra T-Series libraries, Certified Media combined with Media Lifecycle Management (MLM) reduces the most common media related failures. MLM allows you to proactively manage your tape inventory through simple monitoring of over 40 health statistics and automatically identifies at-risk tapes ready for retirement.

Or the solution for securely transport your tapes offsite in our ruggedly built storage container specially fitted for Spectra TeraPacks. Designed and manufactured in the USA using a high-strength resin made to withstand significant impact. This storage container will protect your media from damage during both transport and storage.

And Spectra’s Certified Media Lifetime Guarantee warrants Spectra tapes to be free from defects in materials and workmanship for the life of the media. They will exchange any defective tape free of charge. For full warranty details, please see Certified Media Lifetime Guarantee Statement.

See also: full report list of Powering The Cloud 2013 event.

Andrea Mauro

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.