Many positive things have happened since Sun acquired StorageTek in 2005. Not the least of which are the investments that Sun has made, which have resulted in an expansion of the roadmap that StorageTek had been following. Let's take a closer look.

The journey began with our latest enhancement of the Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) product, VSM5. This fifth-generation system supports up to 16 high-speed FICON channels, and up to 28 TB of effective storage capacity, making it the ultimate buffer between a mainframe and its tape storage systems.

On the tape drive front, Sun extended the T9840 family to include the T9840D – which was not on the StorageTek roadmap. An important feature of this drive is its backward compatibility to media that was written on early-generation T9840 drives – the compatibility spans an unprecedented four generations. In addition, the T9840D includes encryption capability, increased capacity on existing media, and offers the fastest data access on tape.

You can read more about the innovation behind the T9840D in the news alert “Behind the Scenes: True Tape Innovation".

Moving on to tape libraries, Sun's commitment to enhancing its product portfolio was once again demonstrated with the introduction of the SL3000 – another product that was not in the StorageTek roadmap. Delivering enterprise features – but at a mid-market price point, the SL3000 fills a much-needed niche in the marketplace. This, along with increased functionality to the SL8500, has really evolved our overall suite of libraries.

As you can see, Sun's expanded roadmap leads to many destinations and the journey continues.