This was originally posted here, on the EqualLogic
Storage@Work blog
De dupe is great stuff, lots of people think so. We don't have it yet at Dell EqualLogic. It's one of those things that keeps pushing us to invent and create new solutions.
Recently Chuck Hollis and the San Technologist wrote about the de-dupe markets in their blogs. At the core of their posts is the question about de-dupe as a stand alone appliance product. Both believe it is more of a feature than a product.
And so do I, but I'm not convinced that de-dupe appliances from companies like Data Domain can't continue to be successful. Their future depends on their ability to provide powerful economic benefits and the ability (or lack thereof) of their competitors to bring similar value through the de-dupe features in their products. It's possible that they could defy logic – after all that was part of our success at EqualLogic. Several years ago there were lots of people who thought EqualLogic was simply putting an Ethernet iSCSI interface in front of a RAID controller. Maybe Data Domain has a few tricks up their sleeve?