Big Data Still a Story about Tape

Spectra Logic CTO Matt Starr, makes the case that tape continues to have a bright future:

EMC’s recent “Big Data” news splash did not mention tape, which kind of shocked me!  (It’s only kind of shocking, as EMC is tape-hostile.) Tape is Big Data:  80% of the world’s data is stored on tape and tape is the only media that can scale to exabyte(s) and still be cost effective. In fact, tape is the only cost-effective method of storing Big Data. Tape storage is denser than disk storage, costs less up-front and is ten times less expensive to operate over time than a disk-based solution. I am not implying that disk does not have a play in the Big Data world; it is just not well suited as the “meat” of a storage environment.

Starr goes on to say that architects and developers of data archives will continue to build systems based on disk and tape, not just disk.