David West has served as our Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development since April 2011. Prior to his current role, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development from September 2005 to March 2011, and as our vice president of business development from August 2000 to September 2005.

Prior to joining our company, Mr. West served as a director of strategic alliances from April 1999 to July 2000 and vice president of storage solutions in July 2000 at Legato Systems, Inc., which was subsequently acquired by EMC Corporation.

Prior to joining Legato Systems, Mr. West served as vice president of sales at Intelliguard Software, Inc., which was also subsequently acquired by EMC Corporation, from 1990 to April 1999.

Mr. West obtained his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University.

A Complementary Approach to Deduplication

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Dell announced last night the acquisition of Ocarina Networks. As Dell gains traction in the primary space with EqualLogic, it's critical they deliver solutions to compete with the likes of EMC and NetApp. Deduplication is one such technology that's become a check box to being a credible vendor in a competitive space. If you don't have it, buyers will move on. Selection will be based on how elegantly the problem is solved, intersected with the cost to solve it; efficiency, performance AND cost.

What was once a taboo conversation by hardware vendors for fear of sales erosion, now deduplicating data on the primary copy is here to stay. Primary storage vendors are responsible – dare I say, obligated – to deduplicate on the front end. NetApp, for example, has proven to the market that primary deduplication with VMware is a significant need. Dell is now on a path to developing a story that addresses this market in an effort to drive more EqualLogic footprint.

But what about making copies? Copies of data for replication, backup, archive and compliance generate orders of magnitude more space than what's consumed by the original copy. Adding deduplication to all of these copies, across all storage tiers through to tape and cloud, will slash storage related costs. The economic impact of deduplication is profound.

Companies that create copies of primary data, like CommVault, are responsible for optimizing space, performance, recovery and security. Deduplication for us is a cornerstone in the process and our customers have shown up to 90% reduction in storage required to manage copies. Not in theory, but in practice. Why the software creating the copy is key to efficient deduplication boils down to 3 key aspects:

• Intelligence: data and application aware; hardware snapshot integration; optimized for virtual environments
• Scale: beyond the confines of a 'box' through all tiers – including cloud storage and tape
• Choice: no hardware lock-in

I'd like to hear what industry watchers think. I've had many conversations with folks who feel strongly that a combination of storage with built-in primary deduplication coupled with software that creates deduplicated copies for functions like DR, Backup and Archive, is the holy grail of end-to-end dedupe. Dell with Ocarina addresses the primary dedupe need, and with Simpana software, the combination delivers an end-to-end solution with deduplication through all tiers.

So, for those that have been emailing me with the question, "Where does CommVault fit in Dell's portfolio?" our answer is very simple: Dell is driving hard toward a primary active data storage strategy that includes deduplication and compression, while CommVault is helping Dell drive management of all backup and archive copies that are application consistent, encrypted and deduplicated across all secondary tiers, including the cloud. Bottom line, we remain strategically aligned because customers need both; primary (active data) and n-tier copy deduplication. Together, we can provide the market with a better value proposition than others, say EMC, with their collection of disparate, unintegrated point level products.

I applaud Dell for pulling in primary deduplication into EqualLogic.

Submitted Comments

Ok but Ocarina Networks also has some backup functionality in their product so it will compete with Commvault to some extent. Also will Dell give you an inside track to avoid/minimize rehydration penalty when backing up Ocarina primary deduped data to give end to end dedupe?

Submitted By: Jas
Thursday, July 22, 2010 6:16:49 PM

Submit a Comment

Please note that your comments will be sent directly to the author of this blog, and will be published upon approval per CommVault's comment policy.

The content of this blog reflects the thoughts and opinions of the author, and does not represent the thoughts, opinions, plans or strategies of CommVault Systems, Inc. ("CommVault") and CommVault undertakes no obligation to update, correct or modify any statements made by the author of this blog. Any and all third party links provided by this blog are not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, CommVault.