Data library vendor Overland Data Inc of San Diego, California and linear tape drive manufacturer Tandberg Data ASA, from Oslo, Norway, foresee significant enhancement in their respective businesses as a result of a cross-licencing agreement, struck earlier this month, involving Overland’s VR2 data encoding technology and Tandberg’s SLR and MLR drive families. Tandberg becomes the first licensee of VR2 (which stands for Variable Rate Randomizer and is thus said ‘VR squared’), thereby establishing Overland’s credentials as a technology company and not just a library manufacturer, says the latter’s sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Nick Charles (CI, No 3,333). Meanwhile, Overland is licensed to become a second-source manufacturer of SLR and MLR drives, which should enhance the platforms’ appeal to OEMs, Charles went on. The companies will work jointly to implement VR2 on the two drives, with Overland expecting to come to market with its SLR and MLR offerings in the first half of next year. Until now, Overland’s core business has been buying DLT tape drives from Quantum in order to incorporate them into its libraries, and that activity will certainly continue, Charles explained. However, the company has not been able, as an OEM, to incorporate VR2 into these drives, so the deal with Tandberg will be the first commercial outlet for the technology. Furthermore, the agreement is not an exclusive one, so that conversations already underway with other potential OEMs for the randomizer can proceed, though insiders say the alliance with Tandberg requires Overland to give the Norwegian company time to incorporate VR2 into its products before striking any further licensing deal. The technology is applicable to any linear tape platform.
