Why ‘The Summer of 2010′ changed the storage landscape…
Usually summer is a time for reflection and sun tanning at the beach. From a business perspective things tend to slow down a bit while each of us takes a second breath and spend some quality time with our families away from the business side of our lives. There is usually not much industry news few ‘big deals’ occur that were not already in play. Technology shift announcements are typically saved for September when everyone is back, so there is as much traction as possible. Not the case for the summer of 2010!
It may have all started in early June when Permabit announced Albireo. Albireo is a simple and elegant data optimization technology that makes it possible to embed data deduplication into primary storage arrays with a few API calls to the existing storage firmware/operating environment. The press, analysts, OEMs and bloggers, were very supportive and effusive: ‘the tectonic plates of storage have shifted’ or ‘Killer dedupe’ or ‘This stuff is so far ahead in its capabilities and performance I can’t see why you (OEMS) would want to do it yourself’ to mention a few. And yes, there were competitors snipes in the blogosphere – few were given any credence because of the support from press, analysts and OEMs. This started a domino effect that continues today.
A few weeks later, HP announced StoreOnce at their conference and talked about end-to-end deduplication (data optimization) setting a great vision! They went on to announce and describe their implementation of HP Labs deduplication technology (StoreOnce) via their D2D backup appliance. The rest of the details will evolve as they deliver and fulfill the end-to-end vision over the next 18-24 months.
Not to be upstaged by either a startup from Cambridge or the second largest storage vendor on the planet, EMC said ‘We got that’ as they announced their ‘Viper Team’ was working on data optimization (deduplication & compression) technologies that would concatenate the IP within EMC and offer an ability to apply end-to-end data optimization on their entire storage offering – another vision of the end state. Details to be announced later!
Rumors were flying by then involving IBM and Dell acquisitions. . Dell would eventually buy Ocarina for their IP in compression and deduplication via Kleiner-Perkins with the implied intent to deploy data optimization across their storage offering. They also want to become a storage supplier beyond their own offerings by hoping to engage with the OEM partners that Ocarina had partnered with.
IBM would announce their acquisition of Storwize whose compression IP could eventually be embedded into IBM storage. This would be even more powerful if combined with deduplication (isn’t that data optimization too!) and reduce storage consumption for their customers.
All that in June and July! What will August bring?
For end customers ‘this changes everything!’ Why you might ask? Data stored in primary data stores will be compressed and/or deduplicated saving 50-75% or more of the storage space required. As a result, effective costs of storage will be substantially reduced, data center floor space requirements will drop proportionally, cooling and power will do the same and resources to manage ever expanding data stores will become more efficient. In parallel, storage drives will continue to become denser and 2, 4 and 6TB drives will be seen in storage array deployments during 2010 and 2011. Storage vendors will also begin deployment of more efficient unified storage technologies that incorporate embedded deduplication and/or compression, while legacy storage may be enhanced to incorporate embedded deduplication and/or compression. As end-to-end data optimization (extending the impact of dedupe/compression to secondary, archive and backup storage) is deployed, the cost reductions mention above regarding primary storage will multiply and storage expenses will drop significantly as a proportion of IT budgets! Bottom line – your CAPEX and OPEX will be significantly reduced as a result. That’s why the events of the summer of 2010 changed everything!
If your storage supplier is not telling you they have or will have data optimization in their primary storage offerings, if not end-to-end, I’d ask why not and reconsider your storage vendor choices!