BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 26 — Spectra Logic today announced strong revenue and profitability results for the first half of fiscal year 2013, which ended Dec. 31. Following six consecutive years of profitability, Spectra Logic’s momentum continued as high capacity, tape-based archives have become the prevailing standard for media and entertainment, high performance computing (HPC), cloud and general IT organizations challenged with storing, managing and accessing massive amounts of unstructured file data. Company revenue increased nine percent year-over-year during the first half led by strong revenue growth of Spectra's flagship product, the Enterprise T-Finity tape library. The company installed 550 Petabytes (or .55 Exabytes) of tape library storage capacity during the six-month period ended Dec. 31.  

“Our financial strength combined with strong growth in the file archive market is enabling us to invest significantly in R&D, which will be reflected in a strong slate of new products and technologies this coming year. In fact, over the next 12 months we plan to launch a large number of new data storage products – more than were released in the past five years combined,” said Nathan Thompson, Spectra Logic’s chief executive officer. “The value of tape technology and its essential role in today’s modern data centers is indisputable for both traditional backup as well as the tape-based file archive market. This value is recognized and embraced by leading organizations worldwide – and is reflected in Spectra Logic’s consistent growth and momentum.”

Data storage trends bolstered the company’s growth as unstructured data continued to grow unabated, with many of the world’s largest data centers storing Petabyte- and Exabyte-level data volumes on automated tape library platforms. An example of this was the installation of the tape archive system for NCSA’s Blue Waters supercomputing system, which is one of the largest and most powerful supercomputers in the world. Data storage needs for highly scalable, power efficient platforms helped fuel demand for Spectra’s integrated tape library and disk appliance storage solutions, and accelerated demand for its tape-based data storage archives.  

“Spectra Logic has a proven reputation for storage technology innovation and delivers unmatched customer support. We view Spectra as a very strategic partner within our storage product portfolio,” said Aaron Cardenas, chief executive officer, P1 Technologies, a SpectraEDGE channel partner. “Many customers today are grappling with unrelenting data growth and need efficient solutions to store, access and retrieve vast data volumes. Spectra Logic delivers large-scale, long-term storage and active archiving solutions with innovative features such as TranScale, which enables customers to seamlessly transform and scale an existing tape library, as well as advance media health monitory capabilities. Solutions like these exemplify why Spectra Logic enjoys continued growth and success.”

Additional fiscal year H1 2013 Spectra Logic highlights include:

• A strong customer satisfaction and a reputation for quality. Spectra’s tape libraries earned first place in the Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com Quality Awards winning both the enterprise and midrange tape library categories. The 2012 Tape Library Quality awards marked the sixth time the company has won first place in a Quality Awards category, and capped a year of significant success and technological achievements. Spectra also received  high customer accolades in a Taneja Group Research Study.    
• Continued international expansion across Europe, Latin America and Asia, with Spectra Logic products now installed in 44 countries worldwide.      
• Channel partner reseller base grew 10 percent; the SpectraEDGE channel partner network now exceeds 600 worldwide reseller partners.
• Key product introductions, including the availability of 10GbE iSCSI connectivity to tape, the expansion of its enterprise-level encryption key management portfolio with Spectra TKLM, the commencement of LTO-6 shipments, and a partnership with Harris Media to deliver an end-to-end media archive workflow.

“Spectra has achieved consistent, profitable growth by maintaining a rigorous focus on automated tape library technology innovation.  This is a tribute to our dedicated employees and the unmatched efficiency advantages tape delivers in data integrity, energy efficiency, space utilization and system reliability. Our highly scalable storage systems perfectly align with the movement toward increased data retention, which is driving the need for data storage systems that exceed Petabyte and Exabyte capacities,” added Thompson.

--Source: Spectra