Many deduplication technologies attack the storage optimization angle at the tail end of the data management process: when it is transmitted by the backup software to a target storage device. However, some storage providers believe that as the benefits of deduplication are better understood by organizations, deduplication technology will rapidly move upstream such that it will become a core feature in more primary, value-tier and cloud storage offerings. (read more)
The pending acquisition of Data Domain by either EMC or NetApp is going to have a ripple effect across the storage industry with some providers more affected by it than others. Numerous backup providers have gone on the record and told me that they are confident they can compete against Data Domain regardless of who acquires them. However, Permabit has a bigger view. It sees Data Domain's acquisition as the catalyst to the spread of deduplication beyond just disk-to-disk (D2D) backup into primary storage. (read more)
Every organization knows its data stores are growing annually by 30%, 50% or more and, as they do, archiving is taking on a greater role to help organizations more economically store and manage this data. But, what organizations can fail to consider is the downside of not having an archival data store that can scale to meet their current and future data storage requirements. For example, today science departments across the nation are grappling with the inability to cost-effectively manage and scale their archived data stores. Their experience will provide enterprise organizations some insight into the types of problems they can avoid if they act now. (read more)
The lead article in the March 2009 issue of Storage magazine, "Quality Awards for Midrange Arrays", finds that a remarkable 82% of respondents in the survey would make the same storage purchasing decision that they made in the past. But are these impressive numbers a sign, as the author of this article suggests, that users are truly satisfied with their current storage system? Or is it a sign of a deeper, more systemic problem in storage where users resist changing their storage system even when they are presented with a solution that is obviously better and/or more economical than the one they currently use? (read more)
No one plans for "Domesday" scenarios because the thought is (a) if it does happen, I'll be gone anyway or (b) if it does happen, hopefully it won't happen on my watch so I will not be held accountable. But many organizations are unknowingly creating their own Domesday scenarios by selecting archiving products that take them down a path of technology obsolescence. One notable exception to this trend is Permabit with the Enterprise Archive solution which, with today's announcement of its new model 4010, demonstrates that archiving solutions and Domesday scenarios do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. (read more)
Cisco's bold move to enter the server market in mid-March was followed by the equally dramatic news just a couple of days later that IBM was allegedly in talks to acquire Sun. While Cisco's intentions to enter the server market have been rumored for some time, the news that IBM was allegedly in talks to acquire Sun caught many by surprise. Yet what makes both of these moves noteworthy is that they may signal a larger shift away from the traditional segmentation of server, network and storage vendors as it exists now and towards a single vendor providing all hardware and software in order to deliver a more holistic cloud computing offering. (read more)
Lately I have spent some time mulling over the results of the recent Symantec 2008 State of the Data Center Report. Specifically, I have been examining how much money an enterprise can potentially save by starting to place data on different storage tiers instead of following the path of placing most of their data on primary storage as many do now. What I quickly discovered just doing some back of envelope calculations was that an enterprise with 100+ TB of storage could potentially realize over a million dollars in storage savings by placing the right data on the right tier of storage. (read more)
I had a friendly, yet disturbing, conversation with an acquaintance who happens to be a local bankruptcy attorney and trustee. (Boy, how his world has changed recently.) We started off just catching up (my business - not so good; his business - unfortunately very good). The conversation then moved to a local bank that had recently been shut down by the FDIC, and how the ramifications of its failure are being felt by individuals and businesses. (read more)
If you happened to attend any recent conferences or trade shows then you know that most of the discussions center on driving costs out of storage environments. In the current yo-yo economy we live in, most IT Directors are looking for new and unique ways to solve their storage dilemma as storage capacity continues to grow. One way enterprise IT organizations are tackling this problem is thru deduplication using a disk-based backup solution. Though this is definitely a good approach of tackling data growth and cost savings in the backup space, it does nothing to alleviate the burden of data growth on primary storage since backup solutions do not remove and archive aging production data. (read more)
No one is immune from these tough economic times but there are always some technologies that are better positioned than others to benefit from economic downturns. Permabit's Enterprise Archive is one of those products as it provides companies with a cost-effective, scalable and secure means to store archived data on disk. DCIG analyst Jerome Wendt recently met with Tom Cook, Permabit's President and CEO, to discuss how Permabit is evolving in these tough economic times and what steps Permabit is taking to adapt and even thrive during this period. (read more)
