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In a World of Storage-busting Data Growth, Active Archiving Can Save the Day—and Your Data

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Archival data may not require high performance computing, but it does need to stay accessible for productivity, legal, business value, analytics, and compliance. IT must secure that data against ransomware and other types of cyberattacks. And IT needs to do all this at reasonable costs, even given extraordinary projected data growth.

Active archiving technology is constantly evolving as marketplace demand increases. We recently released our 2022 Report: The Active Archiving Ecosystem: Building a Flexible Archival Repository Your Way, highlighting the increased demand for new data management strategies and the benefits and innovations of active archive solutions.

Top innovations within active archiving include Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), sustainability, analytics, and compliance.

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Back to the Future: New-Old Tech Protects Data in the Zettabyte Age

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By Peter Faulhaber

May 7, 2020

I’ve become accustomed to odd looks and lots of questions when I meet new people and tell them I’m in the data tape business. “Really? Tape? In 2020?” is a common response.

I can forgive some people — those who last touched a consumer VHS tape or audiocassette in the late 90s or early 2000s. I’ve come to really enjoy expanding their perspective, though, when I tell them that tape is a major workhorse in “the cloud” and that most of the household-name technology and internet companies are tape users. Business continuity, including several data protection applications is a big part of the reason why, along with tape’s low total cost of ownership and low energy consumption. I think we can all agree that economics and preserving the environment is key to continuity in its own right!

Information is Currency in the Zettabye Age
The worldwide datasphere is currently around 35 Zettabytes (that’s 35 billion Terabytes) and expected to be 175 ZB by 2025 — an estimated annual compound growth rate of 30%.  The odds are good you’re seeing a similar rate of data explosion in your own business. Everything today is born digital, not just “structured” data like databases but “unstructured” data such as spreadsheets, documents, presentations, video, audio and photographs. Add to that the appliances and devices in the “Internet of Things” — smart vehicles, smart planes, smart phones, smart homes, factories and cities. Then add to the mix artificial intelligence, machine learning, ecommerce, email, social media, gaming, surveillance, VR, mobile and more – you can see the path we’re on.

We keep all this data around for years and sometimes decades because it is potentially valuable enough to justify archiving or keeping online in an active archive.  Whether your business relies on archival video footage or photos, harvests data for sale to outside parties or uses information for internal streamlining, strategy, or planning, it’s become impossible to even imagine a modern business without data that is increasing in value.

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Whiteboard Video: Using Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity

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April 29, 2020

Ransomware continues to threaten the security of enterprise IT infrastructures. In this Fujifilm Summit video, storage analyst George Crump talks to IBM’s Chris Bontempo about how artificial intelligence and machine learning are helping improve cybersecurity by identifying and stopping potential threats.

Watch the video here:

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Whiteboard Video: Data – Use It or Lose It

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April 15, 2020

According to IDC, data growth will reach 175 Zettabytes by 2025. Among that data, approximately 7.5 ZB will be archived or stored.

In this Fujifilm Summit video, storage analyst George Crump talks to IBM’s Shawn Brume about the importance of getting the right data and making sure it is being stored in the right way.

Watch the video here.

 

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The Essential Role of Data Tape

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By Rich Gadomski

April 9, 2020

We are living in unprecedented times, but as we navigate through this global crisis together, data storage managers can continue to count on tape to store and protect their data. Just recently, the State of Massachusetts deemed FUJIFILM Recording Media U.S.A’s  Bedford manufacturing facility as an essential business amidst statewide COVID-19 shutdowns.  Indeed, data tape is essential in the battle against this pandemic.

Did you know that hundreds of healthcare providers, Federal Government agencies, pharmaceuticals, and researchers rely on modern data tape as a key component in their data retention and protection strategy, including business continuity and disaster recovery? Household names like the CDC, NIH, FDA, United Health, Novartis, Merck, Pfizer, MIT, Regeneron, Gilead, and many more. And we can’t forget about the hyperscalers that provide tape-based data storage services to thousands more in the healthcare-related industries.

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Covid-19 Update from Peter Faulhaber, Fujifilm Recording Media U.S.A. President and CEO

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March 25, 2020

To Our Valued Customers:

First and foremost, I trust that you and your family are well during this unprecedented pandemic.

On March 23, 2020, Charles D. Baker, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, issued COVID-19 Executive Order No. 13.  The Executive Order requires all businesses and organizations that do not provide “Essential Services” to close their physical workplaces and facilities to workers, customers and the public as of Tuesday, March 24th at noon until Tuesday, April 7th at noon.

Fujifilm is deemed to provide Essential Services and is therefore authorized under the Executive Order to continue operations at its Bedford, Massachusetts facility. Specifically, Fujifilm’s Bedford facility provides services that fall under the Communications and Information Technology category set forth in the Executive Order.

While our Bedford manufacturing facility remains open and operational, I can assure you that the Fujifilm management team is taking all necessary actions and precautions to ensure the health and safety of our workers during these unprecedented times.

Accordingly, and pursuant to Section 1 of the Executive Order, Fujifilm has put measures in place to ensure workers comply with social distancing protocols and good hygiene practices consistent with Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s guidance. In addition, to help minimize the time that our workers are away from home, we are reducing the number of our weekly production days during the period from March 24th to April 7th or until further instructed by Executive Order. We appreciate your understanding and patience if this results in longer than normal lead times to fulfill your orders.

These are challenging times for all of us. Our workers and their families, our communities, and our local businesses are all being affected and forced to adapt to this evolving crisis. At Fujifilm, we remain optimistic and focused. We are committed to working through each challenge safely and persevering through adversity so that we can continue to deliver innovative products and solutions to you, our valued customers, and provide a safe working environment for our team.

We continue to regularly monitor this ever-evolving situation, and will continue to comply with all advisories and mandates from the federal and state governments.  Should you have any questions or need further information, please contact me or your FUJIFILM Sales Representative.

We wish you and your families good health.

Sincerely,

Peter Faulhaber
President and CEO
FUJIFILM Recording Media U.S.A., Inc.

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LTO-8 Delivers!

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By Rich Gadomski

March 19, 2020

As LTO-8 drives and media are increasingly deployed and widely available, the value proposition of LTO-8 is being confirmed by customers and it’s a pretty impressive story.

In the case of a major high-performance computing (HPC) customer who had been using LTO-6 previously for their archive, the jump to LTO-8 has done wonders for their available capacity. With approximately 7,000 slots in their library, fully loaded with LTO-6 media at 2.5TB each yielded a total native storage capacity of 17.5 PB. Migrating to LTO-8 drives and eventually converting those slots to LTO-8 media at 12.0 TB gives them up to a massive 84 PBs, almost a 5X increase. That’s lots of room to scale as needed!

Performance also gets a big boost as LTO-6 drives are rated at 160 MB per second transfer rate compared to LTO-8 drives at 360 MB per second. This means fewer drives are required to meet the same performance objectives. As a result, TCO also gets a major boost as fewer drives, fewer pieces of media and no additional floor space or library frames are required to manage the same amount of data.

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Whiteboard Video: The Advantages of Migrating Tape Technologies

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Migrating from one generation to another generation of tape technology may seem like a difficult task. In practice, though, tape migration is relatively straightforward and provides tremendous ROI thanks to each generation’s increase in performance and capacity.

In this video, George Crump of Storage Switzerland talks to Alan Hall of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about the advantages of migrating to tape.

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Containing the Archival Avalanche

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Relentless digital data growth is inevitable as data has become critical to all aspects of human life over the course of the past 30 years. Newly created worldwide digital data is expected to grow at 30% or more annually through 2025 mandating the emergence of an ever smarter and more secure long-term storage infrastructure. Data retention requirements vary widely, but archival data is rapidly piling up. Digital archiving is now a required discipline to comply with government regulations for storing financial, customer, legal and patient information. Most data typically reach archival status in 90 days or less, and archival data is accumulating at over 50% compounded annually.

Many data types are being stored indefinitely anticipating that eventually its potential value might be unlocked. Industry surveys indicate nearly 60% of businesses plan to retain data in some digital format 50 years or more and a growing amount of archival data will never be modified or deleted. For most organizations, facing terabytes, petabytes and even exabytes of archive data for the first time can force the redesign of their entire storage strategy and infrastructure. As businesses, governments, societies, and individuals worldwide increase their dependence on data, archiving and data preservation become a critical practice.

It’s time to develop your game plan! Check out this white paper from Horison Information Strategies to learn more.

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Storage Swiss Video: The Role of Tape Storage in a Tiered Backup Strategy

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The rise of big data, business analytics and stricter compliance regulations necessitate that enterprises retain far more data than ever before. Against this backdrop, disk and cloud-based backup implementations are scaling quickly. In fact, many enterprises are dealing with secondary storage repositories that are ten times larger than their production storage repositories.

Especially for large enterprises with diverse data stores, tiered backup strategies are critical to meeting recovery service level agreements (SLAs) without breaking the bank; not all data is mission-critical to recover immediately in the event of an incident, and thus can live on a less expensive storage media.

As discussed in the video below, tape storage media is often perceived as a viable fit only for archive and long-term retention use cases today, but it can also play an important role in the backup hierarchy.

View the video here.

Read the full Storage Switzerland blog here.

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