To embroider an item with a design the customer needs an embroidery digitizing file sometimes referred to a tape. This is because the old embroidery machines used punched paper tapes and a tape reader to operate. With the advancements of new technology and the use of computerized embroidery, 3.5" floppy diskettes are now more common in the industry.
An Embroidery Disk and a Digitizing Tape are similar references. A digitizing tape/disk contains all instructions which tell the embroidery machine what to stitch on the garment.