IBM storage gets more Hollywood hardware

In October, we announced that IBM's Linear Tape File Storage project earned a spot at the Emmy Award Ceremony in Hollywood, where the team received a golden statuette for "improving the ability of media companies to capture, manage and exploit content in digital form, fundamentally changing the way that audio and video content is manager and stored" (as stated by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences).

Since then, IBM was awarded the HPA Engineering Excellence Award, presented by the 

Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) for the invention of the Linear Tape File System, providing "a simple, cost efficient way to access and manage massive archives of data and digital assets." Arnon Amir, an Almaden researcher, received the award on behalf of IBM at the ceremony, at the Skirball

Cultural Center, Los Angeles.

Arnon shared some thoughts about the work he's done with his team to bring LTFS to this level of excellence. 

IBM has been working, for a number of years, on developing innovative storage solutions for the M&E 

market. LTFS is a prime example of IBM's ability to think out-of-the-box, develop a new technology and work with our partners and customers to lead a transformation through the industry. This collaboration, across multiple geographies, markets and technologies, demonstrates IBM's global leadership in storage systems.

When we started, the team was very small, however we only had a couple of shared tape drives in our lab to work with. One of core LTFS developers, Lucas Villa Real, worked remotely from IBM Brazil.  We set for him a webcam in our lab, showing the front of the tape drive 24 hours a day. Looking at the live video he could see the tape drive loading and unloading the tape as he tested his software. This must have been one of the most boring live videos ever streamed. :-) 

Later on, as the technology was hardened and transferred to product, the development team grew and span developers at multiple IBM locations Asia, Europe and America, with plenty of tape drives at all locations.

Seeing LTFS forming up from an idea to a product, now being adopted by many of our partners and customers in such a short time is truly fascinating. It is a great privilege to work with our excellent teams worldwide and to collaborate with so many IBM partners and customers. I feel very fortunate to have a part in this project.

IBM was also recognized as a Visionary M&E Company at this year's Storage Vision Conference (held in conjunction with the CES show). Also, December's issue of Storage Magazine Online listed LTFS as one of the six hot storage technologies for 2012, and was featured in Datamation's, "How Open Source Could Drive a Tape Storage Comeback" article. 

More coverage and analyst reviews: 

Computer Technology Review: LTO-5 and LTFS: Shaking the Pillars of Heaven

Backup Central: LTFS: Crazy Like a Fox

Clipper Group: Dealing with Cool and Cold Data — and Getting It 'Just Right' 

B&L Blog: LTO-5: Changing the Way You Look at Tape