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Live From SNW: Page 6 of 10

I also visited with NetGear, which is expanding its "prosumer" and SMB NAS Storage business with 2-bay, 4-bay, and 6-bay systems. Straightforward and low cost, these systems would seem to be well suited for both of those markets.

4 PM -- Riverbed Technology, which last year announced a primary data de-duplication product called Atlas, has slowed down that effort a little to focus more on its core competency -- WAN optimization. Smart move. Focus on what you do right now to reduce costs and increase user efficiency. Good strategy.

To this end, Riverbed is focusing on how its WAN optimization can save money and increase efficiency. Reducing bandwidth by 90 percent allows for the reduction of the data infrastructure in branch offices. Further, they have worked out relationships with both VMware and Microsoft so that services can be moved to its appliance, further reducing the amount of hardware needed for the remote office. With WAN optimization you reduce the need for bandwidth need, eliminating a need for an upgrade. You also can also get better replication performance by reducing the lag between the DR site and the primary site.

Then came EMC, which had no major announcements at the show but re-emphasizing its recent Celerra announcement of upgraded performance as a result of using the CX4 back-end and, of course, its entry into primary storage de-duplication. This sparked quite a bit of discussion about the role of primary storage de-duplication.

My opinion is that other than VMware images, the return on investment for primary storage de-duplication is questionable because for de-duplication to be effective you need duplicate data. While clearly there is duplicate data on primary storage, there is no where near the amount that there is on repetitive backups.