Storage Technology Corp has been much too successful with its automated tape library to have the field to itself for much longer: IBM Corp is now thought finally to be almost ready with a product, and in the meantime, a new company, Odetics Inc in Anaheim, California has launched a low-end, 3480-compatible automated library that stores 300 cartridges against 6,000 for the big ones, and is aimed at the file server market. The ACL5480 supports the new low-cost 3480-compatible drives from the likes of Cipher Data Products Inc, Fujitsu America Inc, Laser Magnetic Storage Internati onal Inc, and StorageTek itself. The base ACL5480 has two drives and takes 288 cartridges, and it can be duplicated or slave units with no drives but room for 384 cartridges can be added. Up to five units with six drives can be daisy-chained for over 360Gb of on-line storage. A system with robotics, two tape drives and software will be $115,000 to $150,000 to end users; sample units first; production second, quarter.
