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sustainabletimes 17 www.binfo.co.uk
Protection for your world
Data growth is outpacing storage
capacity and companies of all
sizes are constantly challenged to
manage this growth in the most
cost-effective and environmentally
sensitive manner.
This is why tape retains a vital
role in HP’s storage portfolio. It
complements the faster read/write
performance of disk solutions with
numerous strengths of its own: low
TCO, huge capacity, minimal energy
and power costs, offine protection
from viruses and hacking and a 30-year
archival life for record retention.
In the second quarter of 2011, the
capacity of new cartridge shipments
was an astonishing 4,235 petabytes.1
To put this into perspective, that’s the
equivalent of 217 billion trees made
into paper and printed. 2 Or, if you
want truly mind boggling, 1 quadrillion
pieces of paper printed double sided.3
In a stack 43 million miles high. And
this is just in one single quarter!
Clearly, the number of tape
cartridges needed to generate these
statistics will be a substantial fgure
in its own right. Overall, the global
tape industry ships around 20 million
LTO Ultrium tape cartridges a year.
Traditionally, these have always been
shipped in polypropylene (PP) cases
to protect the cartridge in transit
and to enable it to remain free of
contaminants, even when stored for
long periods of time. But as Andrew
Dodd, Product Marketing Manager for
HP’s Storage Media business group
points out; this is a challenge when
looking at greener alternatives to
plastic cases.
“In lots of other industries,
companies are making great progress in
reducing the environmental footprint of
their packaging materials. For the tape
media business, this has historically
been regarded as more diffcult because
the tape container is not just a brand
platform, it’s an integral part of keeping
the cartridge safe and secure once data
has been stored upon it.”
Although consumer video and audio tapes
increasingly seem like relics of a bygone
age, for businesses, tape storage is going
from strength to strength.What’s more,
HP LTO Ultrium Eco Cases keep vital
business data safe whilst reducing the
environmental impact of packaging.
So whilst the tape itself might be
relatively inexpensive, the mission
critical data it holds is exponentially
more valuable.
“Clearly, when you are shipping six
million plastic tape boxes a year, you
have to consider the environmental
footprint of that activity”, explains
Dodd. “But although tape itself is a
green storage technology, we realised
that customers would only support
sustainable packaging for the tape
cartridges if they believed that their
data would remain secure. Any
alternative had to be as good as the
traditional PP case.”
The LTO Ultrium Eco Case storage
media is HP’s answer to this challenge.
It’s made from 100% recycled pulp
to create a box that is lightweight yet
rigid and protects the cartridge from
shock, vibration and contamination
from dust or debris. The Eco Case is
bleach and chemical free and fully
biodegradable. Even the information
on the case is printed using organic
soya ink.When compared to the PP
container, the Eco Case reduces oil
consumption by two thirds and carbon
dioxide emissions by a half during the
manufacturing process.
“We’ve calculated that each LTO
Ultrium cartridge case made from
polypropylene uses approximately
one kilogram of oil to manufacture,”
says Andrew Dodd. “For our larger
customers, purchasing 1,000 cartridges
in Eco Cases would save enough oil
to drive a 1.1 litre diesel powered car
about 4,800 miles.4”
Crucially, however, the Eco Case
does not compromise protection
from shock, vibration and debris
contamination when compared to the
plastic case. Users will never put their
data at risk by using an Eco Case to
store and archive their data cartridge.
So job done?Well not quite yet.
“Whilst it would nice to have Eco
Case as the default for all our HP LTO
Ultrium tape shipments, the reality
is that customers are very risk-averse
when it comes to their data.We’ve
had a very positive response from our
resellers and the customers who have
migrated to Eco Case and hopefully,
as people become more aware of the
benefts of Eco Case, the product will
ship in greater and greater volumes.”
And he concludes with one fnal
statistic. So far in 2011, the capacity
on the tapes shipped inside the new
Eco Case is the equivalent of about a
month of output from the BBC’s iPlayer
service. Like a certain popular soap
drama, HP is hoping that the Eco Case
is a story that will run and run.
To fnd out more about Eco Case,
please go to www.hp.com/uk/ecocase.
To download a limited edition
Eco Case poster and fact sheet, please
go to http://www.hpstoragemedia.com/
EcoCasePoster/.
The ECO case
reduces oil
consumption
by two thirds
“
Sources:
1. Santa Clara Consulting Group, Quarterly Backup
Tracker Q2 CY11
2. University of California at Berkeley, School of
Information Management and Systems
3. US Federal Bureau of Investigation
4. Hewlett-Packard