What a week this has been. For those of us who are in the middle of the deduplication market, it’s amazing to see just how much ink is being spilled to discuss the various possible scenarios that could unfold as a result of the NetApp-Data Domain merger announced yesterday. And of course, everyone is having fun on Twitter cracking jokes about NetApp deduping its cash, and so on and so forth. Yet, no one can deny that this puts a spotlight on this technology like never before.
Many of the articles raise the question of where Ocarina might fit into the competitive landscape. Here are a few that caught my eye. Please feel free to add any others of note in the comments field:
InformationWeek, Antone Gonsalves – NetApp Buying Data Domain for $1.5 Billion
“…there’s a growing trend in storage in which network-attached storage vendors are teaming up with deduplication companies in order to make a stronger offering. In this case, NetApp plans to strengthen its deduplication capabilities by buying a competitor. But examples of partnerships include NAS suppliers like BlueArc, Isilon, and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) partnering with Ocarina Networks and others.”
George Crump, Storage Switzerland – NetApp Buys Data Domain – Storage Impact
“We know that Ocarina can dedupe post process and move the resulting optimized data to any tier and manufacturer of storage, we know that Storwize can compress inline with little to no performance impact, but it remains to be seen if NetApp can or even tries to do both, and while they can support a limited number of other types of storage with their V-Series they have yet to master transparent data moves between classes of storage.”
Chris Mellor, The Register -Dedupe This: NetApp Buying Data Domain
“So far it [Data Domain] has no answer to Ocarina’s content-aware compression, the ability to dedupe graphic images and videos such as JPEG and MPEG files that traditional dedupe can’t touch.”
Storage Newsletter – NetApp Buys Data Domain for $1.5 Billion
“NetApp acquired Data Domain too late and will have difficulties to realize a return of this huge investment, even if the acquired company is one of the current most successful entity of the worldwide storage industry, with probably the best de-dupe technology (with others including EMC/Avamar, Exagrid, IBM/Diligent, Ocarina, Quantum, Riverbed or Sepaton).”
