LTO storage technology expanded its reach in 2016 effectively addressing many data intensive markets including cloud, entertainment, video surveillance, hyperscale data centers, High Performance Computing (HPC), and the Internet along with large-scale data intensive applications such as big data, backup, recovery, long-term archive, disaster recovery, and government compliance while positioning for the unknown appetite of the IoT. The LTO tape industry has been fueled by a decade of strong technological development and continues to play a major role for its traditional backup and disaster recovery services in addition to effectively addressing many new large-scale storage requirements. Demand for LTO tape is being fueled by unrelenting data growth, significant technological advancements, LTO tape’s highly favorable economics, low energy requirements, and the growing regulatory and business requirements to maintain “access to data forever.” Steady improvements have made LTO tape technology the most reliable storage medium available, now surpassing the reliability of HDDs by three orders of magnitude. Disk technology has been advancing, but LTO tape’s progress over the last ten years has been even greater.