ALTO's Business Case - Commercial

Reduced Software and Hardware costs: Tape based archives hardware costs include the robotics, tape drives and tapes. Tape formats change every 5 or 6 years, at which point a complete migration of content is required. RAID based archives use disks with an operational life of 3 to 5 years, so require regular replacement. By contrast, ALTO requires neither the robotics and drives of the tape based systems, nor the regular disk replacement of RAID systems.

Reduced Power Consumption costs: While tapes on shelves require no power, the environment needs to be constantly cleaned using air conditioners and the robotics and tapes have relatively high power consumption. RAID based solutions are even more power hungry, needing to have all disks spinning all the time, generating significant heat. By contrast, ALTO spins down and turns off disks that are not being accessed, resulting in a significantly reduced power consumption and heat dissipation.

Reduced Manpower Costs: Robotics systems have high initial systems integration costs, then need more maintenance and down time during their lifetime. The manpower for handling and managing tapes is also significant, as is the manpower required when migrating from one tape format to another. RAID solutions require less manpower, but the time to rebuild a faulty disk is significant and is frequent. By contrast, ALTO disks have a longer lifetime and can be replicated in a fraction of the time.