Litespeed's pretty good. It's used at my company and we haven't had an issue with it.
Regarding the tape backups, test them, test them and test them again. Tapes do fail. You don't want to be in a position where the entire drive on one server has failed (taking the data files and the on disk backups out) and finding that the tapes are damaged and unreadable.
Been there, done that, not fun.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass