{"id":97588,"date":"2021-03-09T08:45:18","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T16:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=97588"},"modified":"2025-12-14T15:33:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T23:33:31","slug":"tape-to-cloud-move-cultivates-opex-gains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/tape-to-cloud-move-cultivates-opex-gains\/","title":{"rendered":"Tape to Cloud Move Cultivates OpEx Gains"},"content":{"rendered":"

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For as many headaches as tape can cause\u2014cataloging, versioning, cleaning, maintenance, dealing with failures\u2014abandoning a technology that\u2019s embedded in your organization poses a challenge. Making a change means realigning systems, going through a procurement process, and ultimately migrating what might be decades of data.<\/p>\n

The time will come, though, when you will be faced with a decision: Upgrade or migrate? When the warranty lapses or the drive fails, do you double down on your on-premises solution and invest in a new tape system? Or do you move to the cloud?<\/p>\n

The IT team servicing Kings County, a sprawling agricultural county located in central California, faced just such a decision when two predicaments hit at the same time:<\/p>\n

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  1. Their tape drive was out of warranty.<\/li>\n
  2. They had to replace all of their physical tapes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    They took it as an opportunity to employ an OpEx approach<\/a>, gaining more budget predictability and protecting 45-50TB of sensitive county data in the process.<\/p>\n

    How to Move From CapEx to OpEx With Cloud Storage<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Always under pressure to save money, John Devlin, CIO of Kings County, really wanted to avoid presenting an $80,000 bill for new tape infrastructure to the county. Motivated to minimize big capital expenses, he zeroed in on cloud backup and storage to realize his desired OpEx approach.<\/p>\n

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    OpEx Benefits of Moving to the Cloud:<\/p>\n