The Tape Storage Council has released summary of 2020’s usage of tapes and a future outlook:
https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/12/07/tape-storage-council-2020-outlook/
Summary:
- Capacity shipments rose to record amounts in 2019
- >225 million LTO cartridges
- >4.4 million drives
- iIBM and Oracle enterprise tape shipments are not included]
- Tapes are still cheaper than disk
- Several public cloud deep archives use tape, such as AWS’s Glacier
- ESG found a majority increasing their commitment to tape (61%)
- Tape’s two big advantages:
- low cost
- longevity
- Big drawback:
- lengthy file access time