I've just returned from SNW in Orlando. No one can deny that the show was quieter than previous events. But it appeared as though, those who did drop in took the show seriously, as the sessions were well attended and the exhibit hall was very active. I guess when travel budgets are tight, you had better come back to the office with more than just some chatzkes and a hangover.
Beyond our platinum sponsorship, Data Domain had a lot going on at the show. It was the first time our prospects and customers got a glimpse at 'Get Inline' - highlighting that Data Domain inline deduplication systems are fast, simple and safe. Dr. Hugo Patterson, Data Domain CTO, spoke on Wednesday afternoon about the critical design elements required to make storage perform in a way that general purpose systems were never intended to be used - variable sized segments, instead of fixed blocks, going fast WITHOUT adding spindles and actually processing data content, not just passing it through.
Brad Blake from Boston Medical Center spoke about his Data Domain implementation. This was particularly interesting given that he recently expanded his use of our system beyond backup to address archive challenges, choosing Data Domain and Mimosa NearPoint™ e-mail archiving software over EMC Centera.
As for SNIA-related activity, Data Domain was the theme lead for the first ever deduplication lab in the recurring Hands-On Lab program. We saw about 50 attendees come through the lab to take the Data Domain exercise. The Storage Networking Industry Association Data Management Forum Data Protection Initiative Data Deduplication and Space Reduction - Special Interest Group (yes, the ol' SNIA DMF DPI DDSR-SIG) included a section on dedupe in the 5th edition of the popular DPI Buyer's Guide released at the show. There was also a deduplication tutorial presented by the SNIA education committee. Many more hands were raised compared to last SNW when the audience was asked who was using deduplication. But, you could also see from their questions that new buyers are getting confused by recent market entrants stretching their positioning as they attempt to make themselves relevant in the space. It serves as a good reminder that, as a buyer, you have to keep asking the hard questions of every vendor and making sure that they provide references and documentation to prove to you that their solution is going to work the way they say it will to solve your storage problems.
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