ATTO Technology to Showcase High-Performance Storage Connectivity Solutions at HP Tech Forum

ATTO Technology, Inc., a global leader of storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, today announced that it will be showing its HP qualified storage connectivity products at HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas, NV. Featured products include ATTO Celerity Fibre Channel HBAs, Xtend SAN iSCSI Initiator and ExpressPCI SCSI HBAs. ATTO products provide HP customers with new opportunities to implement high-availability and high-performance storage connectivity solutions into bandwidth intensive media & entertainment and general IT environments.

The ATTO Celerity line of 8Gb/s and 4Gb/s Fibre Channel Host Adapters have been qualified for use with HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays (EVA) as a high-availability enterprise storage solution for the Mac® market. This solution is designed to enhance workflows and increase productivity by keeping content available in real time for multiple users. Celerity Fibre Channel HBAs feature ATTO’s proprietary MultiPath Director™, a feature-rich solution that provides multiple redundant paths to HP Storage for high-availability access to data. With automatic path failover and load balancing capabilities, ATTO Fibre Channel host bus adapters, with MultiPath Director technology, provide uninterrupted access data and help create a shared storage environment that allows users to efficiently collaborate on projects and consolidate storage resources.

ATTO’s Xtend SAN iSCSI Initiator provides iSCSI SAN connectivity, error handling and security for HP storage systems in Mac OS X environments. It is the first, and most widely-distributed standalone iSCSI initiator that allows Mac users to attach, and load balance, storage connected via an Ethernet-based network. With Xtend SAN, users can remotely access iSCSI storage from multiple servers, increasing accessibility and simplifying storage management, while leveraging existing IT expertise. The combination of Xtend SAN and HP storage systems provides added value for customers whose environments require greater security and automation with features such as a scriptable Command Line Interface, Header and Data Digests, CHAP and iSNS support.

ATTO is also showing ExpressPCI UL5D Low-Profile HBAs that provide high-performance SCSI connectivity for combined with HP MSL Tape libraries. ATTO and HP have teamed together to deliver this solution to HP customers to provide the performance needed for LTO-4 technology. ATTO will have a sampling of its other product lines on hand for demonstration as well, including SAS/SATA RAID and Host Bus Adapters, RAID storage controllers, the newly-released 10GbE Network Adapters and bridging products that connect disk and tape storage to SAS, Fibre Channel and iSCSI SANs. “ATTO continues to deliver high-end connectivity solutions to HP customers presenting new opportunities for HP customers to access storage media and digital content using HP Fibre Channel, iSCSI and SCSI storage systems” states Tom Kolniak, director of products for ATTO Technology. “We are pleased to work closely with HP to provide new opportunities for their customers to more efficiently transfer, manage and store their data.”

ATTO Technology Validates FastFrame FCoE Product Interoperability

ATTO Technology, announced today successful testing of its FastFrameTM Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) at the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA). Based on ATTO’s time-tested and industry proven Fibre Channel stack, the ATTO FastFrame series of CNA’s, which includes the industry’s first Quad Channel Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) CNA, were successfully tested interoperable with the Fibre Channel and FCoE products provided by other industry-leading Plugfest participants.

The ATTO FastFrame family of 10Gb Ethernet and Converged Network Adapters are designed for the next-generation virtualized and unified data centers which utilize multi-core processors in high-end servers and workstations. The ATTO FastFrame family includes the FastFrame NS11 single port and FastFrame NS12 dual port 10Gb Ethernet Network Adapters, as well as the ATTO FastFrame CS11 single port, FastFrame CS12 dual port and the FastFrame CS14 quad port Converged Network Adapters.

"The FCIA Plugfest provides an excellent opportunity to test for compatibility with a broad range of products and suppliers of Fibre Channel, FCoE and 10Gb Ethernet,” "We expect to see larger scale servers and top of the rack deployments in new and expanding data centers starting in 2010, and then moving to core switches in 2011. ATTO is well positioned to provide customers complete connectivity solutions for these environments.”

With support from the FCIA, FCoE products are becoming available in the marketplace at a rapid pace from all major server, storage and networking companies. FCoE CNAs enable consolidation of data and storage networking traffic onto a single 10GbE link, resulting in significant cost savings for customers while preserving their existing investments in Fibre Channel storage and infrastructure components.

"This Plugfest attended by the industry's major server, storage and networking vendors provided a unique forum to perform formal interoperability testing". "Their participation in the FCIA Plugfest demonstrates a strong commitment to the development and release of FCoE products. Customers stand to benefit greatly from the ability to easily run their network and storage traffic over a single, 10GbE converged fabric that seamlessly interoperates with their existing Fibre Channel devices."

ATTO continues to focus on delivering high-performance, leading edge storage connectivity products that will suit the needs of the marketplace and is pleased to have participated in the FCIA Plugfest to further this development. ATTO’s 10GbE Network Adapters are available today and the CNAs will be released in Q4, 2010.

Tape Drive and Tape Media Market Assessment

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Backup tape drive and media sales represented a $1.58 billion market in 2009. Drives accounted for $629.28 million and media for $955.53 million. The market for storage hardware was down in the year but had support from LTO 4 drives. Media unit sales were off and revenues were also affected by competitive conditions in the industry.

LTO was the major segment in the backup technology market in 2009. The drives, produced by HP, IBM, Quantum and Tandberg, represented sales of $534.31 million, 83.32% of backup drive revenue. HP led the market for LTO drives with a unit share of 51.11%. While third party suppliers were prominent in the market for LTO media, drive manufacturers HP and IBM supplying complementary private label products were among the major players. HP led the 24.43 million unit LTO media market with a 31.24% unit share. Fuji was second at 12.70%.

Quantum is the sole source of DLT-S drives. HP’s leading share of the 1.36 MM unit DLT-S media segment was 31.98%. The market for DLT-V media comprised of DLTtape IV and DLTtape VS1 cartridges had sales of $22.72 million. Quantum, HP, Sony, Maxell Imation and Fuji were the leading suppliers of these products.

DAT-72 was the largest DDS/DAT drive format in 2009 but posted a sharp decline in volume. DAT-160 gained traction during the year and supported media revenues. DDS/DAT drive sales amounted to $69.70 million representing 4.40% of the total backup technology market. Sales of DAT media came to $44.55 MM. The leading supplier was HP with 54.74% of the 5.702 million units sold. Sony, Imation and Maxell also maintained significant shares in the segment. DLT-V drive and media unit sales were both off. The drives had sales of $3.95 million in 2009.

The 8 mm technologies accounted for 3.90% of the total back-up technology market. AIT drive volumes were down sharply in 2009. Sales of AIT media contracted. They will continue to be available to support the drives which are now EOL. Tandberg’s 8 mm offerings are its VXA drives. Their sales were also down again in 2009. Total 8 mm media sales which are highly concentrated in AIT and AME products amounted to $41.17 million. Tandberg held a significant position in the media segment supplying cartridges compatible with its drives. Sony accounted for the vast majority of the sales of AIT media. It was the leading supplier in the total 8 mm media segment with a 72.05% share of the 1.088 million units sold.

QIC products represented 1.38% of total back-up technology revenue with sales of $21.90 million. Drives accounted for 18.40% and media 81.60%. The QIC market declined again in 2009. Tandberg was the sole supplier of 5 1/4” form-factor drives. Imation dominates the QIC cartridge media business. HP and Quantum were among the other vendors supplying this media.

Forecast
LTO drives have the most favorable outlook for hardware products over the forecast period. Their sales are expected to grow at a CAGR of 2.47% from 2009 to 2014. LTO cartridges have the most favorable outlook among media products with a CAGR of -2.21% leading to sales of $683.62 million in 2014.

Overland Storage Wins Storage Vendor of the Year

Overland Storage a global provider of effortless data management and data protection solutions across the data lifecycle has won the ‘Storage Vendor of the Year’ category at the 2010 MicroScope ACEs channel award ceremony held at the Lancaster Hotel, London.

Congratulations to Overland for winning Storage Vendor of the Year at this year’s Microscope ACEs Awards. The awards are designed to recognize resellers, distributors and vendors who deliver excellence in IT products and services. HTML clipboardThis award reflects our commitment to the execution of our plan to deliver new technology to the market and to our channel partners who are remain loyal and committed in helping us take the Overland Storage brand to the next level.