End users bestow Spectra Logic with highest scores ever achieved in annual tape library quality survey

BOULDER, Colo., Dec. 14 -- Spectra Logic, celebrating more than 30 years of data storage innovation, announced today that it has earned top honors in two categories winning the Storage magazine /SearchStorage.com Quality Awards for enterprise and midrange tape libraries. The latest honor marks the fourth time the company has won first place in the Quality Awards, with end-users giving Spectra Logic's tape libraries a clean sweep of the highest scores in all six categories -- including product quality, features, reliability, technical support, sales force competence and repeat purchase appeal.

Spectra Logic outranked competing midrange and enterprise tape library solutions from IBM, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Quantum by substantial margins. End-user respondents gave Spectra Logic the highest scores recorded to date in the Quality Award survey of tape libraries, and the company's overall score bested its nearest competitor in the enterprise category by nearly a full point. Spectra Logic received particularly high marks from survey respondents for initial product quality, ease of use and its knowledgeable sales force representatives and technical support personnel.

"What a library can -- and can't -- do is the bottom line, and modern tape libraries are far from the one-trick ponies of yesteryear. Here again, Spectra Logic led a very strong group of product lines to some of the best scores yet in the product features category," wrote Rich Castagna, editorial director for the Storage media Group for Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com in the article, Spectra Logic Reigns Supreme, which reported the results of the Quality Awards survey.

In response to the survey question, "Would you buy this tape library again?" an impressive ninety-five percent of enterprise respondents said they would make a repeat purchase with Spectra Logic, reflecting strong brand loyalty and customer satisfaction, and outpacing responses for all other vendors.

"We are honored to be recognized by Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com as the pinnacle of quality for enterprise and midrange tape libraries," said Nathan Thompson, chief executive officer, Spectra Logic. "The end user experience is always our top priority, and was the impetus for launching Spectra Logic's Tape Without Pain initiative three years ago. The program identified obstacles in using tape storage -- including the critical need to reduce time spent managing and monitoring tape libraries and to perform tape data integrity validation proactively rather than waiting until data is retrieved. This initiative propelled Spectra Logic's tape library innovations and drove dramatic improvements across the industry in tape library technologies and end user experiences of tape in the data center."

In conjunction with the Tape Without Pain initiative, Spectra Logic implemented new features within the T-series tape library hardware design, the BlueScaleTM management software and the SpectraGuard Customer Support offerings. As a result the libraries proactively identify when components are approaching utilization thresholds, and parts can be replaced before failure can occur. In addition, Spectra Logic's Media Lifecycle Management comes standard with all T-Series libraries to ensure complete data integrity and verification when data is written to tape and for years into the future while stored on tape.

"Spectra Logic built its sales and service departments based on delivering the utmost customer satisfaction, and it's gratifying to receive validation of that success by the respondents of the Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com quality survey," added Thompson. "Our people, products and future innovations are all designed around the goal of customer satisfaction, and we are committed to continuing to lead tape library system and software innovation for years to come."

2010 Quality Awards: About the Survey

The Storage magazine / SearchStorage.com Quality Awards are designed to identify and recognize products that have proven their quality and reliability in actual use. Results are derived from a survey of qualified readers who assess products in five main categories: sales-force competence, initial product quality, product features, product reliability and technical support. In the sixth category, respondents are asked if they would repeat their purchase and buy the tape library again. The methodology incorporates statistically valid polling that eliminates market share as a factor. The objective is to identify the most reliable products on the market regardless of vendor name, reputation or size. Products are rated on a scale of 1.00 to 8.00, where 8.00 is the best score. A total of 331 respondents provided 372 midrange and enterprise-class tape library evaluations.

About Spectra Logic Corporation

Spectra Logic defines, designs and delivers innovative data protection through tape, deduplication and disk-based backup, recovery and archive storage solutions. By igniting innovation, the company challenges expectations of the data protection market with intelligent, integrated, and simple to use backup and archive technologies. Throughout its more than 30 years in business, Spectra Logic has delivered high-density, feature rich storage with unmatched service and support to customers worldwide. For more information, visit www.SpectraLogic.com.

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Source: Spectra Logic Corp.