It’s Time To Get An Offsite Data Protection Strategy
February 23, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan
We have nothing against tape cartridges, tape drives, and tape libraries large and small. There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping tapes in an underground vault very far away from floods, winds, fire, and cosmic radiation. Which is why tape somewhere around 200 exabytes of LTO tape drive capacity was sold last year, and it is why tape drives and libraries comprise somewhere around 10 percent of the $50 billion to $60 billion of enterprise storage – meaning flash, disk, and tape media devices – sold each year.
Big Blue invented the IBM 726 tape drive in 1952, which was paired with the IBM 701 mainframe – you know, like the ones that are always showed in older science fiction, and the IBM 3480 in 1984 transitioned the industry away from open tape reels to more contained tape cartridges. Ironically, tape is only four years older than disk, with the IBM 350 RAMAC disk drum coming out in 1956 with its random access media.
Tape has its place, just like disk arrays do. (Do you know that the hyperscalers and cloud builders consume 95 percent of the hard disk capacity sold each year? Disk is a kind of faster tape for cold storage for them. All those cat videos have to go somewhere. . . . )
Having said all that – mainly to keep from getting your hackles up – tape is not enough. In a modern world where people or increasingly AI agents can hack into your machines and create all kinds of havoc, and perhaps even cause a business-killing event, you need offsite data protection. It really isn’t a question. It is more of a statement.
If you are trying to justify the addition of offsite data protection to your security and backup regimen, then you need to take a look at a new whitepaper put together by the analysts at HyperFRAME Research. No matter what solution you pick to get offsite data protection for your Power Systems, the arguments for it are all the same and can help you make the case why your company needs it – and not only can afford it, but can’t afford to not have it. You can download the whitepaper at this link, and we think you will be happy if you do.
