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Tecmar Paves New Road for Iomega Ditto Users

New Ditto Max tape drives pick up where Iomega left off.

By Christian McIntosh, PCWorld   

Iomega continues to sell its Ditto inventory, but in March Techmar paid $3 million for the intellectual property underlying the Ditto products, which are aimed at small- to medium-size businesses.

Tecmar will extend the product line with a 10GB Ditto Max Professional drive priced at $199, the same price as Iomega's 7GB Ditto Max tape drive.

Tecmar also announced two new 20GB Ditto Max tape drives--a workstation version priced at $299 and a networking unit priced at $399. All three drives are scheduled to ship in May and use the same software. The only differences are in performance and capacity, says Ernest Wassmann, Tecmar's president and chief executive officer.

"These products represent Tecmar's entry into the consumer market," Wassmann says. "They give people who are comfortable buying Ditto a road map for our products. This addresses their needs."

Invitation to Upgrade

For Iomega customers having trouble deciphering Tecmar's road map, the company will offer two upgrade packages: a Y2K upgrade kit and a 10GB Ditto with the Y2K kit for 7GB Ditto users. Tecmar is also launching a trade-in program that entitles owners of Iomega 2GB and 7GB Ditto products to upgrade to a 20GB workstation drive with software and media for $250.

"We want to facilitate a smooth transition for existing Iomega customers," says Wassmann. "We will take care of anyone who's ever purchased an Iomega product."

By entering this market segment with built-in brand recognition, Tecmar will garner more clout with distributors and gain a stronger foothold in the after-market, says Fara Yale, a tape drive analyst with Dataquest.

"Iomega and Tecmar are working very closely together in discussions with their resellers and component suppliers," Yale says.

Market Split

Tecmar is splitting the tape drive market between desktop and personal workstations, according to Wassmann. Both segments are growing because more small businesses are using mission-critical applications.

And Wassmann doesn't buy the argument that advances in recordable CD technology and the pending advent of recordable DVD discs will render tape drives obsolete.

By the time recordable DVD discs come to market, Wassmann anticipates a maximum storage capacity of 10 to 12 gigabytes. "By that time, minimum tape drive storage will be at least 20GB," he says. "There are two major trends in the storage industry: increase in capacity and increase in intelligence," Wassmann says, adding that tape drives are only used for backup and archiving information.

"The reason tape lives is that it's a very low-cost solution for the amount of storage you get," Wassmann says.