First LTO Ultrium 2 Licenses Issued

HP, IBM and Seagate Removable Storage Solutions, the technology provider companies (TPCs) for Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program, today announced that EMTEC Magnetics GmbH, Benchmark and ADIC have taken out the first Ultrium format Generation 2 license packages.

“The first generation of the LTO Ultrium tape format has been embraced by system and server OEM’s alike,” said Robert Amatruda, research manager at IDC. “The availability of the Ultrium format Generation 2 licenses demonstrates the commitment by the TPC’s to the LTO Ultrium tape technology.”

As per the published roadmap, the LTO Ultrium format Generation 2 will offer backwards read-and-write capabilities with Generation 1. Additionally, the Ultrium Generation 2 storage capacity will increase up to 400GB compressed (2:1 compression), 200GB native. The data transfer speed will also improve, increasing the peak performance up to 40MB per second native and 80MB per second compressed.

While Ultrium format Generation 2 product availability is vendor dependent, the TPCs expect to see products for the new Ultrium format in the first half of 2003.

“Customer response to the LTO Ultrium format has been remarkable,” said Frank Elliott, Vice President, Worldwide Sales, IBM Tape Storage Solutions. “Clearly, the storage marketplace demands feature-rich, affordable tape solutions in the super drive category. Now, with the Ultrium format Generation 2 products, we will continue to satisfy that need by delivering the unique benefits of an open-standards design – data interchangeability, multiple vendor and feature choices, scalability for growth, high performance and much more.”

The LTO Program offers several different license packages – from enhanced packages that provide the specifications to manufacture Ultrium Generation 2 products, to basic license packages, providing Ultrium Technology format specifications and guidelines for interchangeability.
As part of its compliance testing, the LTO Program requires all licensees to pass a series of compliance verification tests, which call for rigorous data interchangeability testing before being issued a license and the right to display the trusted Ultrium trademark. Compliance testing of all Ultrium products must be completed annually to ensure that all manufacturers adhere to the LTO Ultrium format specifications.