VXA Autoloader Technology                                                                                                         August, 2004 Page 5 of 8                                                                                              one million insertion/extraction cycles, affect no significant attrition to the tape cartridge or loading mechanism.  Ultimately, autoloaders maximize tape cartridge life and reliability by ensuring consistent and precise cartridge insertion and extraction. The autoloader is invaluable when the size of the backup data set expands beyond the capacity of a single tape.  The backup application automatically directs the autoloader to immediately load a new tape upon filling the first tape.  Without an autoloader, the backup operator must be present at the completion of the first tape, to load the next tape, hours after backup initiation. The daily manual exchange of backup tapes imposes a minimum fifteen-minute interruption of an employee’s primary duties, amounting to 65 hours of lost productivity per year.  By reducing this workload to only fifteen minutes per week, or 13 hours per year, tape automation annually adds 52 hours of employee time for other tasks.  Assuming a total employee compensation cost of $60,000, deploying tape automation realizes $1,500 in annual increased productivity.  As such, a solution under $3,000 will pay for itself in less than two years through reduced labor costs.   These calculations do not include the labor savings an autoloader deployment achieves by precluding the requirement for after-hours recovery by immediately addressing media and tape loading errors. The additional reduction of business risk by employing an autoloader presents the greatest return on investment, as the financial ramifications of catastrophic data loss exponentially exceed the cost of the autoloader.  Because the autoloader multiplies the reliability of the backup process, any financial justification for an investment in the backup process multiplies proportionately, again increasing the return on investment. Automating the backup and retrieval processes facilitates increased backup reliability and enhanced operational efficiency.   As such, autoloaders ensure optimal data protection with the added benefit of cost efficiency and investment protection.   Advanced Features in Automated Backup Solutions Over the past twenty years, autoloaders have evolved from scaled-down versions of their sibling large-scale tape library systems to simplified and streamlined designs specifically intended for small and medium-sized businesses.  Such purpose-driven designs have lowered the manufacturer’s suggested retail price for feature-rich autoloaders such as the Exabyte VXA-2 PacketLoader, driven by VXA Packet Technology, to below $3,000.00.  This dramatically low price is due to a combination of a new tape technology and elegantly designed advanced robotics, both providing greater reliability at a lower cost. p1   p2   p3   p4   p5   p6   p7   p8