Hell, yes! The technology itself exists since the 1950s and more than one it’s been called dead but there’s life in the old dog yet. Tape is thriving in the age of cloud storage, especially for long-term data retention, air-gapped protection, and ultra-low-cost archiving. Nothing beats tape in terms of cost efficiency, scalability, shelf life, environmental and energy savings. If you think that tape is just legacy tech, think again. Yowie Deep Archive is a solution that integrates with modern workflows and fits into hybrid cloud and multi-cloud strategies, acting as the lowest-cost storage tier under your cloud apps. Tape isn’t just reliable. It reigns supreme for all companies balancing cost, security, and data durability in today’s hybrid, ransomware-ridden, compliance-driven world.

Having an on-prem tape storage class inside your own datacentre offers several key benefits. One of the main reasons in the era of geopolitical uncertainties is data sovereignty and compliance. Data is subject to the laws and regulations of the country where it’s generated or stored which often means that certain data must stay within the country or region. The number of customers with strict data residency or sovereignty requirements is steadily growing, especially in – but not limited to – verticals like finance, healthcare, or government. Public cloud deep archive services from any of the large hyperscalers charge for storage, retrieval, and API requests. Owning the infrastructure means that these fees do not eat into margins. Instead, you can control costs, avoid egress fees and offer competitive, predictable pricing to your customers. Your customers will love to idea to have their data stored at a known location inside the EU and with their trusted advisor.

Common use cases for Yowie Deep Archive are compliance data, backups, research data, media archives, financial records, etc. It’s ideal for all companies that must store compliance-related documents for 5+ years, organisations with large media archives (videos, photos, raw footage), research institutions preserving historical datasets, or businesses of any size that are backing up old, rarely accessed data to reduce costs.

You want the flexibility of the cloud, but you don’t want to sell your soul to unpredictable storage bills? That’s where combining modern S3 object storage with tape for archives comes in. It’s the perfect blend of instant access, rock-bottom cost, and air-gapped security. Yowie Deep Archive isn’t just smart, it puts and end to picking between cloud and tape. Smart businesses use both. S3 object storage is a secure and modern protocol giving you speed, scalability and flexibility without breaking the bank. Tape gives you the air-gapped safety net and the lowest cost per terabyte on the planet. With Yowie Deep Archive you never have to say “we lost the data” or “we can’t afford to keep it”. And if you’re not yet convinced how about this: Market dominating hyperscalers trust tape, so can you.

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There are a couple of technical terms floating around but in essence there are four major storage classes. Let’s kick it off with primary storage which is designed for high performance and low latency to ensure fast access for ‘hot’ production data and supports real-time apps, databases, and analytics. The cost per terabyte (TB) is high because it’s typically SSD/NVMe based or high-performance object storage. Secondary storage is ideal for less frequently accessed ‘warm’ data that still needs to be available with reasonable speed. This storage class is HDD-based or lower-tier object storage and therefore cheaper than primary storage but be careful – it’s not dirt cheap! Secondary storage is ideal for backups, compliance data under frequent audit requirements or secondary analytics datasets. Rarely accessed ‘cold’ data should reside in the archive storage class. Yes, retrieval is getting slower the more the temperature (terminology wise) drops but let’s be honest: How often do you need to access long-term regulatory archives, historical research data, archived video footage or inactive customer accounts? And even if you need to retrieve that data – cosy up with a cup of tea or coffee while you wait for access. Budget wise the archive storage class is way cheaper than primary or secondary storage. Last but not least there’s deep archive for ‘ultra-cold’ data that you usually store and forget, like compliance, or legal hold, or scientific raw data. Not to forget about historical media archives for broadcasting companies or large studios. This storage class has the lowest cost per TB but be aware that you’ll have to pay with another valuable currency when you need to access ultra-cold data: patience.

Air-gapped storage means completely isolating your data from any network — no internet, no LAN, no sneaky remote access. Some compliance laws even require air-gapped copies so when regulators come knocking, you show them offline, locked-down, auditable proof that you’re serious about protecting your data. Secondly, if your data’s sitting in the cloud or even on your corporate network, it’s one bad click away from encryption or tampering. Air-gapped data? Untouchable. Hackers or rogue employees can’t hack what they can’t reach. Also be careful not to fall for the markting messages from some cloud providers. Just because it’s called “cold” doesn’t mean it’s air-gapped. Yes, cloud is convenient but air gaps are survival. If you’re serious about not getting wrecked by hackers, insiders, or bad luck, you need air-gapped storage in your datacentre. In a nutshell it’s a simple formula: Data on the network/in the cloud is vulnerable. Data on tape, in a vault? Untouchable.