HP and Sony Corporation today announced an agreement to create the next generation Digital Audio Tape format – the DAT 320 – providing improved performance and capacity over existing DAT drives.

HP and Sony are jointly developing the DAT or Digital Data Storage (DDS) standard, but will separately offer their own DAT 320 tape drives and cartridges. Similar to previous generations of DAT/DDS, the DAT 320 will be an open standard, which ensures partners can continue to obtain license rights.

Small and midsize businesses as well as enterprises with remote offices use tape to archive and back up data as a key component of their disaster recovery strategies. IDC forecasts the tape market will generate more than $1.4 billion in 2009. The industry is experiencing healthy performance since tape provides SMBs with a cost-effective storage solution to handle the massive increase in digital data.

“The DAT 320 offers customers and partners a data protection solution that delivers unmatched performance and capacity,” said Bob Wilson, vice president and general manager, Storage Platforms Division, HP. “Combining the expertise of two industry leaders that share a legacy of delivering proven DAT/DDS technology will result in a new standard for tape archiving with the low cost of ownership and reliability DAT customers have grown to expect.”

“Demand for higher-capacity data backup and archiving continues to be important for small and midsize businesses and enterprise environments,” said Masayoshi Sugiyama, president, Chemical Device and Energy Business Group, and executive vice president of Sony Corporation. “Combining HP’s technical base, which includes six DAT generations, and Sony’s 50-year history in magnetic recording technology, including Metal Evaporated based media, will provide a compelling solution to meet the demands of higher-capacity and easy-to-manage data protection.”

Businesses rely on the volume-leading DAT format to back up and restore critical business data. This provides protection against the loss of data in the case of events such as system failures, operator error, theft and natural disasters.

“The data storage and archive needs of small and midsize businesses continue grow at an unabated pace,” said Robert Amatruda, research director, Tape and Removable Storage, IDC. “The DAT 320 drive provides a cost-effective data protection solution, especially for those who have used DAT/DDS tape technology for more than a decade.”

With backup speeds of up to 86 gigabytes (GB) per hour with 2:1 data compression, the DAT 320 will offer up to 320 GB of capacity on a single cartridge – compared with 160 GB, available from the current DAT 160 format. The DAT 320 also will consume fewer watts per GB than previous generations and will be backwards compatible with the DAT 160.