News

Singapore, May 13, 2008 – IBM today announced that is has surpassed a milestone in the delivery of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) drive solutions, by shipping its one millionth LTO drive to its client. The announcement was made today at an IBM customer, business partner and employee event in Singapore today, where the LTO drives are manufactured in Singapore and shipped by IBM.

Since 2000, IBM has been an industry leader in shipping LTO drives to customers, and is the leader in tape drive shipments of the latest LTO technology, fourth generation, which includes built-in hardware encryption to help users address data security initiatives.

IBM’s LTO offerings and its entire System Storage products are an important part of the information infrastructure strategy - helping clients manage and use information effectively. This strategy maps directly to IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center model, which helps clients improve IT efficiency and facilitates the rapid deployment of new IT services for future business growth. The new model is based on best practices for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

"IBM has been a leader in delivering LTO solutions capabilities, and today we unveil a milestone in the area of LTO drive demand by IBM clients with the shipment of the one millionth LTO tape drive,” said Claudia Tan, General Manager, Systems and Technology Group, IBM Singapore. “By working across multiple platforms, IBM's LTO drives help our client lower energy costs and enable streamlined archive solutions for decades to come.”

Singapore's IBM Integrated Supply Chain (ISC) facility, established in 1994, serves as the worldwide source for several of IBM's critical storage products. It is responsible for assembling the entry level products of the Tape Storage Family, namely the Head Actuator Assembly, Linear Tape-Open, Enterprise Drive and the 3580 Tape Drive. The Manufacturing facility also assembles IBM System Storage DS6000, part of the mid range Disk Storage Family and serves as the international Warranty Repair Center for LTO Tape Drives, shipping to clients from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and countries in the Asia Pacific Region. In addition, the Singapore facility serves as the Plant of Control for other critical storage products manufactured at other sites around the world.

Recent Highlights
Among some of the recent industry highlights in the past twelve months for IBM’s LTO and tape storage solutions:

April 2007 – IBM is first to market shipping LTO-4 tape drive technology with 1.6TB capacity per cartridge (2:1 compressed) and the capability to backup data at up to 864GB per hour (2:1 compressed) with hardware data encryption capabilities.

April 2007 – IBM ships LTO-3 Half High tape drives with SAS attachment and TS3100 and TS3200 automation support for high speed SMB tape library automation.

April 2007 – IBM enhances automation family of tape libraries with support for LTO-4 tape drive encryption for scalable cross enterprise automated data protection.

November 2007 - IBM is first to ship LTO-4 half height tape drives to help users with needs for a lower cost entry offering with data encryption capabilities.

February 2008 – IBM enhances tape libraries to support LTO-4 Half Height tape drives to help SMB that has space constraints and high performance requirements.

March 4, 2008. – CeBIT, the leading European trade fair for information technology, announced the iF International Forum Design has awarded IBM four iF product design awards for superior design, innovation and development around its Systems and Technology Group products and solutions including the IBM System Storage TS2240 LTO-4 Half Height Tape Drive.

According to industry analyst IDC, LTO tape drive shipments increased 15% in 2007 as compared to 2006.

About the IBM System Storage
For more information about IBM and our tape storage solutions, please visit http://www.ibm.com/storage.