The survey, which was taken in the fourth quarter of 2007, focused on the views of more than 200 network administrators and mid-level tech specialists at mid-size to large companies throughout the United States.

"The integration of tape storage into a tiered information infrastructure is highly strategic for customers, due to its low cost of ownership, low energy consumption and portability for data protection," said Cindy Grossman, Vice President of Tape Storage Systems, IBM. "LTO tape technology is a perfect choice for enterprise and mid-sized customer with its proven reliability, high capacity, high performance and ability to address data security with built-in encryption and data retention requirements for the evolving data center."

According to the survey, 58-percent of the respondents use a combination of disk and tape for long term archiving, 24-percent use tape exclusively, and 18-percent employ a disk-only approach. In this group, 68-percent of the current disk-only users plan to start using tape for long-term archiving, and over half (58-percent) plan to add tape for short-term data protection.

"The survey findings suggest that disk-only users may be experiencing a bit of buyer’s remorse," said David Geddes, senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard Research, who oversaw the study. "We found that a wide majority of companies that employ purely disk-based approaches are looking to quickly include tape in their backup and archiving strategies."

LTO tape technology delivers the backup and archiving features needed by today’s storage administrators, including high capacity, blazing performance, 256-bit drive-level encryption for data security and WORM cartridge support to address data retention needs. With low energy consumption, tape technology can also provide organizations with a green alternative for the data center. Studies have shown that tape-based backup and archiving solutions can deliver substantial TCO benefits and energy savings.