In order to help them achieve their targets, NEC is currently recruiting channel partners and distributors and is delighted to be able to announce the appointment of Sojitz Corporation of America as exclusive representation and master distributors for North and South America. "Sojitz Corporation is a 110 year old Global Fortune 100 company and we feel very lucky to have the support of one of the largest and most respected trading companies in the world," said Naoto (Nick) Hashimoto, sales manager for the storage products division. NEC would also like to announce the launch of their rackmountable 4u, 40- cartridge LTO-2 library device, which is certain to make a big splash in the US market. This product will have the best space efficiency (1u per 10 cartridges) in the industry. "NEC Corporation has a 40-year pedigree in the design, manufacture and marketing of high performance, high reliability storage products, both in Japan and in European markets," adds Bob Waltenspiel, Sojitz Corp of America's sales manager. "Entering the North American market was a logical step, noting their successful track record in those two markets. We feel very lucky to have achieved this agreement with one of the most highly regarded brands in the World." Thanks to the ability to store up-to sixteen terabytes of capacity, the 4u, 40-cartridge autoloader can be used to save individual data, hard-disk contents or data from entire company networks overnight, providing and un- interrupted eight week backup cycle. Performance and access speed have been doubled in the LTO2 autoloader as compared to the predecessor model. The magnetic tape drives have a high capacity and provide the necessary performance for archiving and storing the growing amounts of data from internal departments or small and mid-sized companies. The open-format LTO technology guarantees the fastest, error-free back-up possible paired with a long life time and high degree of failure safety. With a speed of 35MB per second, the LTO2 magnetic tape drive can save 200GB per data cartridge. This corresponds to the amount of data held by 300 CDs. In the compression mode, saving speed can be increased to approximately 70MB per second and memory capacity doubled to circa 400 gigabytes per data cartridge. In comparison with other drive manufacturers and vendors offering LTO2 drives, NEC's drives are over 15 percent faster and offer a unique dust avoidance technology. The backup process takes place entirely automatically for maximum user convenience and can thus be conducted at any time of the day or night. If a backup requires more than one data cartridge, the automatic tape change ensures there is no need for monitoring of the process and that the tape must not be changed by hand. In addition, NEC's autoloader also has an optional bar code reader that permits quick access to saved data. The access time during a tape change is less than 17 seconds.