Linear Tape-Open (LTO) is a magnetic tape data storage technology originally developed in the late 1990s as an open standards alternative to the proprietary magnetic tape formats that were available at the time. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM and Quantum control the LTO Consortium, which directs development and manages licensing and certification of media and mechanism manufacturers.

The standard form-factor of LTO technology goes by the name Ultrium, the original version of which was released in 2000 and can hold 100 GB of data in a cartridge. The seventh generation of LTO Ultrium was released in 2015 and can hold 6.0 TB in a cartridge of the same size.

Upon introduction, LTO Ultrium rapidly defined the super tape market segment and has consistently been the best-selling super tape format.^[1][2] LTO is widely used with small and large computer systems, especially for backup.

Source: Linear Tape-Open – Wikipedia