deduplication

EMC doubles-down on the mainframe

I'll bet that, until November 10, you'd never heard of a company called Bus-Tech. Now that EMC has made Bus-Tech yet another acquisition target, you're wondering why. In a statement Wednesday, Frank Slootman, president of EMC's Backup Recovery Systems division, positioned Bus-Tech in mainframe backup and recovery: "The addition of Bus-Tech will enable us to deliver a suite of next-generation mainframe backup products that are highly differentiated in terms of performance, integration and supportability."

Since its founding in 1987, Bus-Tech has occupied a place in mainframe channel protocol conversion--a relatively small niche. Now Bus-Tech … Read more

Storage predictions for 2011

My worthy competitors within the ranks of the storage analyst community have been out there for the last few weeks making predictions for 2010. Since I like to differentiate myself (and let's face it, I'm a bit late to the 2010 prognostication party) I've decided instead to get a jump on next year. Here are a couple of predictions for 2011:

Dedupe everywhere Data deduplication (dedupe)--squeezing data objects down to a fraction of their original size--surfaced in 2003. Four years later, dedupe went mainstream as a process embedded within backup. Last year we saw emerging implementations … Read more

Deduping: Killer app behind battle for Data Domain

Much drama has ensued since NetApp announced the intended acquisition of Data Domain on May 20 for the whopping sum of $1.5 billion.

EMC countered with a $30-per-share offer valued at $1.8 billion. NetApp then raised its offer to $30 a share, valued at $1.9 billion. Data Domain essentially said, "Thank you, EMC, but we like the new NetApp offer more than yours." EMC then claimed that it had been unfairly shut out of the bidding process and appealed directly to Data Domain employees.

NetApp countered with a claim that EMC's potential acquisition of … Read more