Tape Ark brings historical data to digital age with Equinix support

A vast amount of the world's largest and historical data collections sit idle and inaccessible on tape media, because it was one of the cost-effective places organisations could store records since the 1970s.

With advancements in digital technologies, Perth-founded and headquartered technology company, Tape Ark, which specialises in tape to cloud migration, is focused on liberating these data collections for organisations.

Once liberated, Tape Ark's customers are able to generate new knowledge and new revenue streams from multi-petabytes of historical data, the company states.

With operations in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Tape Ark has turned to Equinix, the digital infrastructure company, to advance its digital infrastructure to support the next phase of its expansion, improving the performance of its tape to cloud migration services and meeting local data sovereignty needs.

To migrate multi-petabyte data collections to the cloud where organisations can connect and analyse all their data (legacy and current) in real-time, requires a network-dense digital infrastructure with rich ecosystems in key locations that are adjacent to all major cloud service providers, Tape Ark states.

With a growing global footprint and a portfolio of tape migration services, Tape Ark has selected Platform Equinix and its digital services to reduce latency and improve connectivity so its customers can virtualise their entire physical tape collection and preserve their backups in a secure, redundant and low-cost Virtual Tape Library.

With the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) adoption, Tape Ark's migration services are helping researchers and analysts in various industries perform more impactful studies, such as identifying major diseases based on medical records and discovering diverse trends in farming output to water and electricity consumption.

Highlights and key facts of the Tape Ark and Equinix collaboration includes:

• Tape Ark's data migration services are used globally in a variety of industry sectors, including media and entertainment, healthcare and life sciences, mining and metals, education and research, the public sector and more. In the media and entertainment sector, streaming services have seen major television and movie companies rely on Tape Ark to migrate their content archives to the cloud to create new revenue streams.
• Due to the scale and size of its data migrations, Tape Ark requires high bandwidth connectivity and low latency, and data centres in specific locations to meet local data sovereignty requirements and be close to customers. Equinix's geographical footprint, robust digital infrastructure, physical security and connectivity to all the leading cloud service providers were all major factors behind Tape Ark's decision to select Platform Equinix as the digital foundation of its services.
• Currently, Tape Ark is leveraging Equinix Fabric and Equinix Network Edge, as well as Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in Montreal, to connect directly to public cloud, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. With data and applications kept in the same Equinix location, there is no speed performance issue to move large volumes of data. Direct access to the digital ecosystems also enables new opportunities and new marketplaces for customer collaboration and partnerships. 
• Equinix's global platform and interconnected ecosystems provide an environment for Tape Ark to architect customisable infrastructure, and where all its facilities can be managed through Platform Equinix. Tape Ark has total visibility into its operations across multiple locations accessed through a single portal. Equinix provides the flexibility, scalability and global reach Tape Ark needs to extend its services.
• Looking ahead, in the next three to five years Tape Ark plans to deploy in more than 10 Equinix IBX facilities around the world, including Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Dublin, Mumbai, Sydney and Perth as major data ingest locations.

Guy C. Holmes, CEO & President, Tape Ark, comments, "With advancements in cloud and digital technologies, Tape Ark's customers need to migrate legacy tapes from offsite backup storage vaults to the cloud, which is essential to their future innovation and growth. Not only does it enable them to run powerful AI programs, generate new insights and create new revenue opportunities, but it also reduces the risk of exposure for organisations with sensitive data.

"To support our global expansion, we require access to world-class, secure hosting of our end-to-end data migration services, which is Equinix. The Equinix brand is something we want to be associated with and this collaboration provides us with facilities in all the right locations we need, with extremely fast and direct connection to all the major cloud service providers where we can move very large data collections."

Guy Danskine, Managing Director, Equinix Australia, says, "Tape Ark is a wonderful example of Australian innovation and validates the growing demand from our customers for comprehensive global digital solutions that provides the flexibility to strategically place workloads across multiple public clouds, private clouds and on-premises.

"The sheer scale and size of the data migrations Tape Ark undertakes for its customers requires critical digital infrastructure, control and low latency.

"We're delighted that Tape Ark has put its trust in Equinix as they enter the next phase of their business expansion, and we look forward to supporting their needs as they continue the important work of liberating data collections that can help the society discover new knowledge and develop breakthrough innovations for social good."