The LTO Program

The LTO Program was formed in 1997, and three companies -- Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM and Quantum -- jointly oversee the development and roadmap of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology. The program achieves its objective to promote open linear tape solutions by facilitating technology development, enforcing ongoing compliance verification standards, and by supporting the LTO and Ultrium brands through marketing activities. In providing open format specifications to simplify the complex array of tape storage options, LTO technology allows users to have multiple sources of product and media with an open nature – enabling compatibility between different vendors’ offerings. The LTO Ultrium format is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format developed and is continuously enhanced to help address the growing demands of data protection. This ultra-high capacity generation of tape storage products developed by The LTO Program is designed to deliver outstanding performance, capacity and reliability in the midrange to enterprise-class server environments.