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A new white paper written by Dr. Shawn Brume of IBM entitled Reducing Risk and CO2e in the Disposition of IBM Physical Tape Media does a great job in answering what to do with tape media at end-of-life (EOL).

The report is timely as the industry is gaining interest and awareness of energy consumption in data storage driven by ESG directives. For example, a recent white paper by Brad Johns Consulting, Improving Information Technology Sustainability with Modern Tape Storage demonstrates the sustainability and cost-benefit of tape:

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It’s that time of year again to look ahead at what the New Year might bring in terms of data storage. Looking back at our predictions for 2022 to see how well we did, I think we nailed 4 out 5.

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It seems like 2022 was a busy year in data storage and that was reflected on the white paper and research report front. Below is a compilation of my top 6 favorites from this past calendar year that I am glad to share for easy access. Happy reading and Happy New Year!

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The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 27) concluded on November 20, 2022 with some poignant comments by António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations:

“It will take each and every one of us fighting in the trenches each and every day.  Together, let’s not relent in the fight for climate justice and climate ambition.  We can and must win this battle for our lives”.

Reading these words inspired me to look back on the year of 2022 and acknowledge that we in the IT industry are focused on sustainability as evidenced by the trade show agendas that commonly addressed this issue.

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Sustainability has been a hot issue at all of the trade shows I have attended this year from Data Center World in Austin back in March, to the Sports Video Group Forum in July, to the Flash Memory Summit in August to the Open Compute Summit in October. So it was not surprising that SC22 held in Dallas earlier this month also had a heavy sustainability agenda for its HPC target market.

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In this executive Q&A, Jim Ghelfi, Head of Hyperscale Accounts, discusses his role at FUJIFILM Recording Media U.S.A. and how tape and FRMU can benefit hyperscale environments.

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Ransomware continues to be a big concern for IT professionals and corporate stakeholders as this lucrative criminal activity promises to be with us for the long term. Research from Kroll found that the financial toll suffered courtesy of a significant cyberattack amounts to at least $5 million per attack. In about one-third of cases, it cost organizations between $10 million and $25 million. 16% said it amounted to more than $25 million. This total includes loss of market valuation. When a company is attacked, there is widespread PR fallout to contend with. Customers, partners, and investors hear about it and become wary. Stock prices fall, attrition rates increase, and new business is difficult to obtain. It takes time to ride the wave of negative publicity.

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I had the privilege of attending the OCP 2022 Summit held in San Jose last week with the theme of “Empowering Open”. I say privilege because it was inspirational for me, and I suspect for many of the 4,000 or so attendees as well. The reason for that was the announcement by OCP Foundation CEO George Tchaparian (pictured at right) that the four tenets of OCP that have acted as guiding principles for 11 years now, namely Efficiency, Openness, Scalability, and Impact are to be enhanced with a fifth tenet, and that is Sustainability. It is the mission of OCP to foster innovation in the data center industry and now sustainability must be a part of all the ideas that OCP incubates and advances. George shared his vision that the modern data center will not only be scalable but also sustainable! 

So What is OCP? 

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A new research report on the life expectancy of legacy audio tape was published last month. To me, it speaks to the reliability of tape technology, be it audio, video or data; vintage or modern day. It also reminds me of other research, stories, findings and updates from years gone by and more recently, that ultimately paint an impressive picture in terms of the reliability of tape technology.

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Businesses of every size and type generate and collect enormous amounts of data. And there’s no getting around the fact that storing all that data is expensive. But many of the costs associated with data storage are simply unnecessarily high — particularly when it comes to cold data.
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