Exactly. IBM's had several generations of tape tech in the can, and has managed the rollouts with calm competence for at least back to '97 when I got started i

Exactly. IBM's had several generations of tape tech in the can, and has managed the rollouts with calm competence for at least back to '97 when I got started in the backup business. Their research is a prominent part of the LTO platform, too. My observation of that landscape was that they gave toys to LTO at a rate calculated to extinguish the utility of tape research in other places. This means there's a plausible competition, which IBM wins all the time. This may sound like I'm down on them for it; I'm not. Their hardware was rock solid, performed as advertised.