Tape Ark® Partner Resource Hub, For Microsoft Sellers

Why this matters in HLS:

• Patient data may need to be retained for 7-30+ years
• Research and clinical trial data may require indefinite retention
• Unsupported hardware = data inaccessibility risk during audits, litigation, or patient requests
• Inefficient or incomplete access to the data required for longitudinal research studies

Because of these requirements, data stored on tapes needs to be migrated to avoid it becoming inaccessible, and also so it can be used in new patient and research AI and ML tools.  Data on tape can not be accessed by AI until it is liberated.

Deeper details. Tape warranties only replace the media, not the data. If a tape fails:

• Patient records may be unrecoverable
• eDiscovery timelines may be missed or significantly delayed resulting in legal fines and additional legal fees
• Compliance violations may occur leaving your organization at risk

There is no healthcare-grade durability guarantee on ageing tape media, however Microsoft Azure offers 11 x 9’s of durability virtually eliminating any potential of data loss.

🔗Further reading: Magnetic tape deterioration

Why this matters in HLS:

• HIPAA requires minimum necessary retention
• FDA & GxP require data integrity and controlled deletion
• State laws may conflict with federal retention rules

Keeping data you need to retain, and removing data you are legally required to no longer retain is almost impossible when data is on tape.  A single tape can have data you need to both retain and remove and liberation of this data is the only way to achieve that result.

Deeper details. Deleting a file in backup software does not remove it from tape. This creates:

• Over-retention of PHI
• Legal exposure during audits or Right-to-Be-Forgotten requests
• Increased breach surface area

Technically all of the data written to tape is accessible until that whole tape is destroyed, meaning most organizations are never able to get in compliance!

🔗Further reading: National Institute of Standards and Technology Data Sanitization

HLS reality:

• Long retention = compounding storage costs with no added value
• Offsite tape vendors increase pricing every year by CPI, as well as inflation, tariffs and logistics
• Healthcare budgets are under constant scrutiny
• Long term retention often means retaining multiple legacy tape drive and software systems, along with data centre space dedicated to the tape restore function, the cloud eliminates this
• Offsite storage providers charge per tape, irrespective of how much data is on it

Because our solution is charged by data volume, you pay for what you use, not just for shelf space in an air-conditioned room. This allows you to finally get off the ever increasing cost of tape vault storage.

Deeper details. A CEO from a global offsite tape vault provider publicly acknowledged benefiting from inflation-driven pricing increases—without corresponding service improvements.

Cloud economics shift costs from:

• Per-tape → per-GB
• Fixed logistics → elastic consumption
• CapEx-heavy → OpEx-friendly

🔗Further reading: Tech CEO admits praying inflation

Physical storage depends on petrochemical-derived media, grid-powered vault facilities (which may include fossil fuel energy depending on location), and routine logistics operations involving fossil-fuel-powered transport.

Why this matters in HLS:

• Many healthcare organizations are required to report against ESG metrics
• Academic and research institutions have sustainability mandates that renewable energy options will help satisfy
• Tape logistics from offsite vaults requires trucks on the road that add unnecessary carbon footprint

The cloud offers instant access, uses renewable energy, and eliminates unnecessary courier vans on the road.

Deeper details. Major tape storage vendors admit they are decades away from carbon neutrality, still relying on:

• Diesel transport
• Physical handling
• Manual logistics
• Extensive cooling and electricity consumption from non-renewable sources

In addition, breaking away from tape, means that tape manufacturers use less petrochemical originated plastics to manufacture every tape.  In fact over 95% of a tape is not recyclable due to the contaminated plastics used in the manufacturing process.

Cloud providers like Microsoft Azure align with HLS sustainability strategies.

🔗Further reading: Azure sustainability 

Acknowledge: Retaining tape data in the cloud is often more cost effective and unlocks a range of capabilities.

Reframe: Moving tape libraries into the cloud will optimize data retention management, data restore SLAs, and provide greater visibility.

➡️Redirect: Tape Ark is more cost-effective and offers substantial additional value.

The Risks Of Using Offsite Storage Providers

Recent media reports reveal how many enterprise organizations have suffered serious consequences from offsite storage failures — including tapes lost in transit, stolen from courier vehicles, or destroyed by fires and water damage at storage facilities.

When your data leaves your control, so does your certainty.

Is your customer prepared to accept that level of risk?

1. Backup tapes containing data on approximately 600,000 employees were reported lost during offsite storage handling. The investigation involved federal authorities.
2. Backup tapes containing sensitive customer data were lost while being transported to an offsite tape storage facility.
3. A box of backup tapes containing sensitive customer information was lost during shipment by a third-party courier.
   
4. Backup tapes containing personal data of approximately 1.2 million federal employees were lost by a courier during shipment.
5. Backup tapes were stolen from a courier’s parked truck while being transported to offsite storage.
6. Backup tapes containing 2.2 million patient billing records were stolen from a courier’s car after protocol violations.
7. Multiple fires at a storage facilities destroyed large volumes of archived corporate records, raising concerns about offsite storage resilience.
8. Over 5,000 backup tapes were damaged due to sprinkler system contamination and improper freeze/thaw handling, requiring specialized recovery.

Acknowledge: Common in HLS, where tape costs are often buried across departments.

Reframe: When factoring in:

• Offsite storage
• Compliance overhead
• Hardware support risk
• Audit response time
• Legacy backup licensing
• Data centre costs to maintain aging hardware for older tapes
• Software licensing to maintain access

The true cost of tape is often significantly higher.

➡️Redirect: Tape Ark supports healthcare organizations with a full TCO assessment. Data liberation can be done without upfront charges and sellers should highlight the hidden costs of offsite storage that they pay to maintain a tape restore capability.

🔗Further reading: Storing Tapes In Offsite Storage Because You Think It’s Cheaper?

Acknowledge. Very common in healthcare environments with decades of accumulated data.

Reframe. Unknown data = unknown risk.
Auditors, litigators, or regulators will eventually ask.

➡️Redirect. The Tape Ark Comprehensive Media Audit provides low-cost visibility into:

• What data exists
• How old it is
• What risk it represents
• The potential for major compliance and data retention issue for the provider
• The audit can help you determine if the next major medical discovery is waiting to be actioned from your data

Acknowledge. This is typical in healthcare IT modernization journeys. Low access does not mean low risk.

Reframe. Older tape collections benefit most from cloud migration due to the lower storage capacity of the older tapes and the cost per-GB pricing on Azure. The fact that they often contain the history of the company means they can be used in GenAI for LLM’s etc. Legacy tape data often holds:

• Historical patient records
• Research datasets
• Long-term regulatory evidence

Cloud migration transforms this from dead data into governed data, allowing all data (both tape and cloud) to be managed in one location.  No more tape hardware, data centre space, power, cooling, software licences, and tape management costs.

➡️Redirect. Compare offsite tape storage vs cloud storage (per GB) and ingest costs with Tape Ark’s funded remote audit service and TCO calculation.

Acknowledge: Yes the movement of thousands of tapes can feel daunting however Tape Ark has an end to end management plan that will make the transition simple.

Reframe: Proven global ingest process. Phase, managed transition.

➡️Redirect: Tape Ark provides an end to end service that takes the workload off your customers’ hands. Tape Ark will liaise with the offsite storage provider and manage the end to end transport and ingest of the customer’s media with little to no assistance from the customer’s operations team.

Acknowledge: Some customers get concerned about how they can do a restore while the tapes are in the possession of Tape Ark, but rapid access to your data is part of our service offering.

Reframe: Managed logistics, minimal operational impact.

➡️Redirect: Tape Ark can provide rapid access to data during the ingest process ensuring that there is no disruption to the customers restore requirements.

Acknowledge: The privacy of clinical data is critical and well understood by Tape Ark, but you should consider whether an offside provider is lower risk.

Reframe: Secure, documented chain of custody.

➡️Redirect: We recommend you share the media links featured in the section The Risks of Using Offsite Storage Providers with your customer to ensure they understand that the “do-nothing” action plan is likely more risky.

Acknowledge: Microsoft and Tape Ark both understand the criticality of personal health information and the nature of security required to maintain it.

Reframe: Azure-aligned governance and encryption.

➡️Redirect: When using Azure instead of physical type storage you get the benefits of Microsoft Azure’s security technology, no physical access to the customer’s hardware or tapes, and end-to-end encryption during ingest to their Azure account.

Acknowledge: Azure and Tape Ark recognise that the customer’s time is precious.

Reframe: Low seller lift. Tape Ark carries execution

➡️Redirect: Aside from the initial effort to close the customer’s offsite account, most workloads happen without the HLS organization involvement until it comes time for hand-over training on how to manage restores from a virtual environment or cloud repository.

🔗Further reading: Digitising Mass Legacy Tapes Doesn’t Take As Long As You Think