STORAGE

LOUISVILLE, Colo., GARTNER PLANET STORAGE -- Tape storage automation is alive and thriving. And for high-end computing environments, StorageTek continues to push the envelope. With the enterprise level robustness of the StorageTek T9x40 family, these drives work around the clock with less time spent searching, freeing more time for delivering data. StorageTek(R) (Storage Technology Corp.) (NYSE:STK) , the storage services and solutions expert, today announced availability of the 'fast access' T9840B tape drive featuring the industry's first native FICON interface for the latest high-throughput IBM zSeries server channels. With the new native FICON interface, StorageTek's T9840B tape drives can be seamlessly integrated within enterprise customers' MVS environments and StorageTek's leading automated tape library systems. This combination delivers more than double the throughput of ESCON drives, offering the industry's fastest data access with twelve seconds average load and search, and more than 100 kilometers of long-distance connectivity. "Our award-winning family of T9x40 tape drives set the standard in tape automation performance and connectivity options in high-end computing environments and continue to lead the high-end, half-inch drive market," said Gary Francis, StorageTek corporate vice president and general manager, Automated Tape Solutions. "Today's announcement underscores our commitment and ability to anticipate and rapidly adapt to our customers' connectivity needs via our advanced tape automation products." "Achieving significantly accelerated data throughput rates and access speeds, long distance connectivity and higher levels of reliability are becoming essential focal points for enterprise MVS customers," said Fara Yale, Research vice president, Gartner. "MVS customers that are transitioning from ESCON to FICON connectivity stand to double their throughput and gain 10 times more cabling distances for data transmission to offsite data centers and disaster recovery/business continuity applications, making upgrading to this connectivity a win-win on many levels." StorageTek's T9840 "access-centric" tape drives feature superior speed and unmatched access capabilities, making them the ideal tape drive solutions for transaction-intensive, time critical applications and HSM. The T9840B features a dual port option to enable two active paths to each drive for higher availability and performance, and can be directly attached to Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) equipment for better throughput and cost- effective transmission to remote locations over fiber optic networks.