Next Gen LTO Ultrium Licenses to Become Available

Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM Corporation and Seagate Removable Storage Solutions LLC, technology provider companies for the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program, today announced that licenses for second-generation LTO Ultrium technology will become available in the first quarter of 2002 to storage and media manufacturers.

The second generation of the LTO Ultrium format will provide users with doubled storage capacity over Generation 1, increasing to 400GB compressed (2:1 compression), and to 200GB native; and greatly-enhanced transfer rates, improving to 20-40MB per second. In addition, users will benefit from a greater than 30 percent increase in the number of tracks and average tape speed, as well as an improved recording method.

“The licensing of second-generation LTO technology represents a major milestone for the LTO Program and is another strong indicator of the open format’s viability for the midrange networking computing environment,” said Larry McMannon, general manager of Seagate Removable Storage Solutions. “Seagate, HP and IBM are dedicated to the continued advancement of LTO technology, as well as further establishing the Ultrium format as the preferred tape storage of choice for today’s complex enterprises.”

In addition to OEMs HP, IBM, and Seagate, storage media companies such as EMTEC, Fujifilm, Imation, Maxell, and TDK, currently have LTO Ultrium products on the market.