Sun apparently was too busy to notice the rumors in the industry that tape, like the mainframe, is dead. What is happening at Sun such that both their overall tape business grew by 3% and their mainframe attached storage business grew by double digit percentage in the latest quarterly results?

“Sun Sees Growth in Data Tape Storage”

IBM is not claiming growth in their tape business nor have I heard a word about their mainframe storage business growing. In their latest prepared remarks that are available on the web, IBM states “Storage revenue declined 20 percent year to year, with double-digit declines in both disk and tape.” IBM continue their statement by adding that “Our tape performance was in line with the market.” Seems like IBM forgot to notice that Sun's tape business was up 3% during the same quarter when IBM's tape business was down double-digit but in line with the market. What market are they referring to? Apparently not the mainframe storage market.

But why is Sun's tape business growing? Quietly to the industry but very boisterously to its customers, Sun has been making significant inroads in the overall tape business and, in particular, the mainframe attached storage business. Now the word has gotten out.

“Sun tweaks tape platform while waiting for Oracle to take over”

“Sun Adds New Virtualization and Software Technologies to Industry Leading Tape Archive Portfolio”

“Sun Upgrades Its Virtualized Tape Archive”

This latest announcement on April 14, 2009, is just the latest in a series of announcements that have taken place over the past 18 months to refresh and enhance the entire line of tape products at Sun including the mainframe Virtual Storage Manager - VSM5, the SL8500 and SL3000 libraries, the T9840D and T10000B tape drives, and KMS 2.0 encryption. Sun has invested greatly in the enterprise and mainframe tape business to allow for growth this last quarter.

Sun also announced that Fujifilm will be the tape media development partner for the next generation of the Sun StorageTek T10000 tape drive family, building upon the relationship that yielded the industry's first one terabyte (TB) drive to bring more tape archive innovation to customers.

But what about the impact of the Oracle acquisition on Sun? Well if you read all the opinions on the web you will likely become very confused so I will let Oracle's CEO, Larry Ellison, speak about this topic. On May 7, 2009, Larry explicitly stated that “Disk storage and tape backup are critical components in high-performance, high-reliability, high-security database systems. So, we plan to design and deliver those pieces too. Clearly many Sun customers choose disk and tape systems from other vendors. That’s what open systems are all about: providing customers with a choice. But Oracle expects to continue competing in both the disk and tape storage businesses after we buy Sun.”

“Oracle Plans to Keep Sun's Storage Business”

“Transcript of an Interview with Larry Ellison by Reuters on the Acquisition of Sun Microsystems”

It is an exciting time to be in the tape business and even more so for the mainframe storage business at Sun.