Indeed, secondary storage is the primary focus for NetApp NAS these days. "People are sensitive to performance in primary storage," Kidd says. A key goal for NetApp is to maintain that performance level while getting more out of secondary storage in terms of backup, archiving, and other features. This is ostensibly why NetApp bought Topio for $160 million late last year. (See NetApp Grabs Topio.) It's also why Kidd told Byte and Switch at the March NetApp analyst day that "The real opportunity there [with Topio software] is to get more and more hooks onto primary locations and replicate that onto our secondary platform."
Kidd's cautious consideration of new technologies will likely continue to draw criticsm from competitors, who insist NetApp's lagging in clustering, CDP, de-dupe, and other new technologies. He's not concerned with that opinion. In his view, adding these kinds of features for their own sake doesn't an empire make. "Once everyone checks in, storage shares won't be dramatically different than they are now," he says.
Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch
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