Tech startup aiming to transition traditional tape media to the cloud

Perth-based technology startup Tape Ark, founded by serial entrepreneur Guy Holmes, announced its official launch with a new data storage solution.

Tape Ark wants to change the data storage landscape by providing high volume migration of aging corporate data from archive tape media directly to the cloud using public cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services.

The physical storage of legacy tapes and backup data has become the "elephant in the boardroom" that no one wants to address.

With every passing day these data sets become more complicated – they increase in volume, age, and resource requirements while becoming less accessible and continuing to deteriorate and erode.

Through the use of Tape Ark's scalable and automated tape migration infrastructure and with public cloud offerings like Amazon's gateway and Virtual Tape Library (Gateway-VTL), legacy tapes can be seamlessly migrated to the Cloud and then accessed through the Tape Ark client portal.

The only costs to clients are ongoing monthly cloud storage costs – which in most cases are less than the current physical storage costs in an offsite data vault.

The reading of the physical tapes is free of charge.

"This solution disrupts the age old tape vault storage concept that has become billion dollar businesses out of providing nothing more than air conditioned rooms and courier vans," says Guy Holmes, TapeArk founder.

"Tape Ark turns this service on its head by using the public cloud as its vault, and the internet as its courier van, cutting access to legacy data down to minutes instead of days.

Holmes says that we have readily adopted cloud storage technology in our everyday life – we now listen to music through Spotify and Apple Music in lieu of buying new CDs and storing the physical media.

These storage platforms make our music and films more portable, accessible, convenient and secure.

Holmes is an entrepreneur and innovator who has worked in data management and preservation for over 20 years.

Tape Ark is his fifth startup, having previously been the founder of both an offsite vault storage business, and also a digital data storage and tape recovery business – both of which he has now sold.

After selling one of his last startups to a publicly listed company he has now set his sights on getting us to rethink and adopt 21st-century data management technology for the good of commerce and the environment.

In a nutshell, the benefits of Tape Ark's offering are:

• Free migration from tape to the cloud

• Cost neutral when compared to doing nothing and leaving your tapes in a physical vault

• Fast and efficient access to data– forget courier vans, old tape drives and restoring tapes.

• Providing unparalleled access to data – the service opens up legacy data to Data Mining, Analytics, and Big Data technology at the click of button.

• Removal of the need to maintain legacy tape drive infrastructure, software and expertise to read old tapes, reducing your data center footprint and associated running costs

• Increase security and 11x9s of durability of data

• The creation of a complete disaster recovery backup of archive data once it is in cloud by replication to several geographic locations

• Eco-friendly and environmental benefits including getting courier vans off the road and reducing data center electricity and cooling requirements