"There's been a trend the last three to six months where end users are couching data protection more around recovery, instead of backup," he says. "What they're talking about now is, 'How fast can get I get X amount of information restored?' "
Kenyon says Quantum is seeing traction start to pick up this quarter for its DX line of disk backup systems. "We're getting more heavy-duty customers," he says. "The 'onesie-twosie' people are now turning into people who want an enterprise disk backup architecture."
As for the longevity of tape, most respondents believe it will remain a part of the overall data protection universe, with 40 percent agreeing that "there will always be a need for removable media" and 36 percent saying it will persist for long-term archiving. But another 21 percent believe tape will die out altogether and "go the way of the Pinto." [Ed. note: which is not to say it will burst into flame.]
Tape vendors, though, continue to maintain that the two approaches aren't competitive, but complementary. Saurin Shah, director of advanced technology and applications at Imation Corp.'s data storage division, says the removability of the media will continue to be an important differentiator for long-term storage.
"We look at disk-to-disk as secondary storage and not necessarily backup," he says. "What I mean by that is, it's staging data, which eventually you need to make a decision about whether you need to move it to tape."
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