In the past week a leading analyst provided the industry with the truth about the market leading vendors in the tape automation industry. The results may surprise you but here are the facts:

1. Sun is the market leader in total factory out automation and extended its lead in the first quarter of 2009.
2. The SL500 has climbed from a second place market share position in 2007 to the market share leader as of the first quarter 2009 in the 100-500 tape automation sub-category.
3. The >1000 slot automation sub-category is led by Sun and continues to grow. This is mostly a result of the industry leading SL8500.
4. Sun's Enterprise tape drives (the T9840D and T10000B) have also gained share since 2007 and were the market leader in enterprise drive shipments as of first quarter of 2009.

Sun has gained share across the spectrum of tape automation and enterprise tape drives since 2007 and the first quarter results of 2009 prove these facts.

These facts prove once again the Sun is committed to and is investing in the Enterprise Tape Automation and Drive business to be the market leader in the tape industry.

Last week Sun received FIPS 140-2 Certification for two of their Enterprise Tape Drives. The T10000A is certified at Security Level 1 while the T100000B is certified at Security Level 2. While IBM has also received FIPS 140-2 certification for their TS1120 and LTO4 drives, both drives are at Security Level 1 and IBM, at the time of this posting, has not submitted the TS1130 for certification.

Sun has achieved an industry-first with the Security Level 2 classification of T10000B showing that all aspects of the drive functionality and physical security meet the higher requirements implicit in the Security Level 2 classification. If you wish to read about the 11 criteria for the different levels that need to be met to receive FIPS 140-2 certification view table 1 on page 12 of the “Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules” document.

The third Sun Enterprise Drive, the T9840D, has completed its testing and the results have been submitted to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) for validation and issuance of the FIPS 140-2 Certificate.

No need to take chances with the safety of your data. Secure and encrypt your open systems or mainframe data with the most secure drives in the industry.

Another example of Sun's investments and commitment to Enterprise Tape technology.

Today IBM announced the new FICON Express8 features for their z10 servers. What does that mean for the Sun Storagetek customers with tape solutions currently connected to a z10 server? As usual, Sun has you covered and it is full speed ahead. Because of Sun's relationship with IBM, Sun has already tested and certified its tape solutions with the new FICON Express8 features. These cards are designed to support a link rate of 8 gigabits per second (Gbps) with autonegotiation to 2 or 4 Gbps to support existing devices for added investment protection.

Great news for the Sun customers and another example of Sun's investment and commitment to keeping current with the latest mainframe technology.