"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
-- Computer Networks by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 2003
Yes indeed, backup tapes still matter even in this age of gigantic hard drives and cloud storage. Just ask tape storage specialist Quantum
These results were not particularly inspiring, and Quantum's shares ended up sinking 3% the next trading day. However, management can see an end to sliding sales and expects to actually start growing again in the just-started fiscal year.
Tape sales in the fourth quarter swooned 12% year over year to just $54.4 million and are not expected to turn around, so that growth would clearly have to come from disk systems and data management software. Those divisions are actually on quite a tear these days: The DXi line of disk-based backup solutions grew 26% and branded software sales were up 31%.
Keeping that growth up won't be slam-dunk easy, of course. Part of the problem is that storage giant EMC
But the big data market is big enough for several very large product suppliers. Data mining, digital video, and business intelligence are some of the smoking-hot buzzwords driving the need for smart management of huge data sets. The Fool has created a special report on big data. To find out how Quantum fits into this brave new world, not to mention the one stock you need to know in the big data space, you can grab your copy totally free right now.