Exabyte is taking the red marker to its automated tape back-up systems reducing prices by as much as 28 per cent.

The company says it is trying to drive price parity between a standalone tape drive and its automated tape sub-systems.

Accordingly it has reduced pricing on its automated tape backup solutions by up to 25 percent in order to drive adoption into the SMB and branch office markets. Among Exabyte products seeing lower prices, the Magnum 1×7 Tape Autoloader with LTO-3 technology is now available for $7985.

Prices are reduced on Exabyte’s VXA systems and Magnum Autoloaders which use LTO (Ultrium) technology, including Exabyte’s newest product, the award-winning VXA-320 PacketLoader, which delivers up to 3.2TB of backup for $3,899 (RRP $A inc tax). For smaller business Exabyte has reduced the price of the VXA-2 based PacketLoader to $2398 from the previous price of $3,350. Exabyte will also reduce media prices accordingly.

“With this price drop, we can respond to challenges from our reseller partners to provide automated backup that satisfies the affordability needs of their customers as well as provide motivation for smaller organisations to move away from low-capacity CD/DVD backup or dead-end DDS/DAT hardware,” said Richard Giddey, country manager ANZ, Exabyte.

The company points out that IDC rates the VXA and LTO technologies as bright spots in tape storage market, with shipments of both formats showing increases year over year and outpacing their closest competitors.