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Storage Industry Consolidation: Page 2 of 3

Other commentary focuses on EMC and HP and their supposed need to fill out their own storage product lines. The most common predictions: EMC will buy partner Quantum to gain its data deduplication technology and that HP will buy partner Sepaton for its deduplication and virtual tape libraries.

One more theme that has surfaced in many stories and blog posts is that NetApp really bought Data Domain to make itself a more attractive acquisition candidate. Executive deny that, and went to great lengths this past week to throw cold water on the idea. In a briefing at the company's headquarters, NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven and Vice Chairman Tom Mendoza said the company isn't for sale and that they intended to grow and compete against all comers.

They did acknowledge the speculation and discussed five companies -- Cisco, HP, IBM, EMC and Dell (sound familiar?) -- that might have an interest in NetApp -- and then explained why such a deal wouldn't happen. Warmenhoven said Cisco would be more likely to buy EMC to get VMware and its virtualization technology. HP has its own storage product line and doesn't need to make a big acquisition. IBM is a NetApp partner and can benefit from selling its products without buying the company. Dell may not have the money available to buy a company the size of NetApp. And EMC would face antitrust challenges if it tried to buy NetApp.

Those arguments make sense. But even if you take NetApp off the trading table, there are a lot of other potential deals that could happen in the next 12 months. Wall Street will be making bets and you will probably be able to track the latest and hottest rumor by following stock prices and short sales. For storage administrators, such deals have more to do with features and capabilities and systems availability and integration than the value of a company or the price of a share of stock. They face the prospect that products they rely on to storage and manage crucial data could disappear.

As we enter the summer season, it is a good time to think about the changes rolling over the storage industry and place some (small) bets on who will buy who -- and who should buy who. Let us know where you are placing your bets.