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	Now What For Y2K Consultants? Survive the Leap Year Bug? You know, years divisible by 100 are usually not leap years, but years divisible by 400 are leaps -- and you either know more about this than you ever wanted to, or it's as anticlimactic as Y2K was. Here's hoping it's the latter.

VXAdata E-Mail Newsletter
March 2000

FEATURE STORIES

Field Testing by ISPs, Dot-coms and Telcos
They're fast-moving, technically savvy, demanding, and on a budget. Just our sort. Our first feature story this issue has the results of a recent field test of the VXA drive by a group of ISPs, dot-coms and telcos.

They tested it on Linux, NT and other systems, backed up over 32TB of data, performed over 254 restores. And then, they let us have it with their opinions. Sneak Peek: 97% said VXA is superior to DDS, and 70% said VXA is superior to DLT. [Details...]

How to Deal with Exclusively Locked Files
Guest writer Morgan Edwards, President and CEO of UltraBac.com software, has written an article for VXAdata on the importance of understanding the two major approaches to backing up files that are exclusively locked during backup. It's an in-depth examination of the Locked File Backup (or LFB) approach and the Application Program Interface (or API) approach. [More...]

NEWS SINCE LAST ISSUE

Buzz and Fear on the Internet.
It might give our marketing honchos heartburn, but we've added a link to our news section that does a Usenet query for references to VXA. If you're interested in what other people are saying about VXA, and don't entirely, you know, trust the marketing machine, you can use this link. We call it the queasy query, but we're actually quite confident: The buzz is good. Check it out.

OpenTape.org
Ecrix is working with a group called the Linux Fund to sponsor OpenTape.org, a nonprofit web site supporting the open source software movement. Ecrix is the prime sponsor of the site, and all advertising and other revenue generated by the site go to the Linux Fund, a non-profit organization that supports Linux programmers with development grants and university scholarships. You can also support the Linux Fund by getting their branded Mastercard - make your geek purchases with a penguin card. Stop by their site and ask what's Gnu. (Sorry about that one.)

	Storage Company News  HP Realigns Manufacturing  STK CEO steps down  Quantum Restructuring  Breece-Hill Acquisition

Doing the Company Two-Step
Lately it seems that it's the companies and the execs making more news than the products. Dave Weiss resigns as CEO of StorageTek, HP realigns manufacturing, Quantum restructures its DLTtape division, laying off up to 900 people.

Breece-Hill sells itself off to Tandberg Data for $12 million, but is expected to keep operating as a separate company (and Ecrix neighbor).

And the low-end tape market gets yet another dance partner as bankruptcy-bound Tecmar announces the sale of its Tecmar, Ditto and WangDAT lines to Overland Data, who says the move is "expected to accelerate its entry into the $2 billion low-cost, entry-level data storage backup market."

As reported here in VXAdata, Tecmar bought the Ditto line from Iomega ten months ago for $3 million bucks, or about the price of one Super Bowl commercial.

Basic problem with this low-end market: pressure from both sides, as consumers and small work groups switch to other technologies, and people with serious data storage needs find it essential to move up-market, to technologies like, um, well, ours. VXA. (it's a blatant plug, sure, but gotta pay those bills).

What, Me Worry?
CIO online ran this chart recently, showing what a group of 191 CIO's are worrying about now that Y2K is behind us. No big surprise, e-commerce is one of the top reasons for sleepless nights in IT departments, with security and staffing distant seconds.

More Ecrix News

It's now 75,001 VXA Tape Drives are now available through TechData, a distributor of over 75,000 tech products worldwide. Thanks! VXA Promotions E-mail Find out about special deals, discounts and rebates on VXA Products. To subscribe to this monthly e-mail, go to our subscribe page. Subscription information VXAdata is sent every eight weeks or less to subscribers only. You can subscribe or unsubscribe right here.

We'd Like to Thank the Members of the Academy: For the first time, one product has won three awards at the Reseller Xchange Convention: VXA. Best New Hardware Product, Most Innovative Product, and Overall Best of Show. Thanks, we'll add them to our trophy case! Let Us Know Feedback of any sort is appreciated by the editors, please send e-mail to grainville@ecrix.com.