Why magnetic tape is still crucial for the web

These days almost nobody still uses magnetic tape, at least not in the consumer market. For major cloud providers, magnetic tape is still the backup plan of choice. Despite research in alternatives like optical storage or DNA storage, magnetic tape is still the fastest and cheapest way to backup very large volumes of data.

But as a new article at Bloomberg points out, the supply of these tapes is in jeopardy as the number of tape manufactures has dwindled over the past three years from six to just two. Sony and FujiFilm Holdings remain the sole suppliers, and each seems to think there's still one firm too many in this market.

The tech industry worries that if Sony or Fujifilm knocks the other out of the U.S., the winner will hike prices, meaning higher costs for the big cloud providers; for old-line storage makers, including International Business Machines, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Quantum; and, ultimately, for all those companies’ customers. “The pond is shrinking, so there’s a lot of fighting between the crocodiles for the remaining water,” says Phil Goodwin, an analyst at market researcher IDC. Companies such as Maxell Holdings Ltd. and TDK Corp. have abandoned the tape market since 2015 as it has been steadily commoditized, according to ITC filings by IBM, HPE, and Quantum. The cloud providers either declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The advantage of tapes is that when stored at 10°C, they can last as long as 30 years, which is far longer than other disks. Furthermore, the latest standards allow magnetic tape disks to store a much as 30TB. The tapes are usually stored in warehouses, vaults, or old mines. Full details Bloomberg.