For example, according to some vendors continuous data protection is mostly hype because the backup paradigm works just fine for the majority of their customers. Others swear that the demand for VTLs (virtual tape libraries) is only a miniscule percentage of the target devices market. I could go on with similar examples, but you get the point.
Sour grapes? Perhaps, but often those statements are just a temporary smokescreen to gain some time while the vendor is secretly working to catch up with its competitors.
As for the slew of new products, probably the most interesting novelty I can finally talk about this week is the NearStore VTL from Network Appliance. As you may remember, news of NetApp buying Alacritus and its VTL application for a handful of millions has been running since last spring.
However, nobody can blame NetApp for taking its time to come up with a new product (the NearStore VTL) based on Alacritus software, especially if you consider that the company has also been working on a major reshaping of its offering.
In fact, if I step back from the news for a second and focus on NetApp as it was, say, two years ago, I see a company held captive by its own platform of successful products most of which, alas, ran only on its proprietary hardware.
Fast forward to the present, and it's easy to see that the "new" NetApp has moved away from that isolation by extending its line of products and the reach of those products -- for example, the company opened its OS to virtualization.
As a result, NetApp's large applications portfolio will now work on other vendors' storage platforms, which is obviously good news for its existing customers and certainly removes a deterrent to acquiring new customers.
The NearStore VTL is another example of NetApp's enlarged horizon. Interestingly, it's the first appliance that doesn't run the Data Ontap OS common to all other NetApp products; instead, the NearStore VTL appliances run a Linux-based OS.
NetApp's interest in VTL may be rooted in that data-protection confusion I mentioned before. According to Krish Padmanabhan, EMC's general manager of heterogeneous data protection, there are no analyst reports that size up this backup market -- and that lack of numbers probably explains why vendors have discordant views on the importance of VTL.
"We estimate [the market] is around US$500 million" adds Padmanabhan, explaining that according to a user study conducted last fall by TheInfoPro, VTL came up as the hottest storage technology, ahead of such as stalwarts as asynchronous WAN replication, 4Gbps Fibre Channel, IP for SAN, and Serial ATA drives.
"From what we can tell," says Padmanabhan, "this market is growing explosively."
NetApp is entering that "explosive" VTL market with two units, the NearStore VTL 600 and the Nearstore VTL 1200. The VTL 1200 offers twice the performance and capacity of the VTL 600 and can store more than 100TB of backup data while emulating thousands of tape drives.
"Our focus is to protect all storage with the NearStore VTL, not just NetApp's," Padmanabhan explains. If this sounds like an ambitious plan, consider that in the same announcement NetApp presented a new version of the Decru Datafort security appliance that can now encrypt data on iSCSI networks.
In addition, the long-ago announced synergy between Symantec NetBackup and NetApp SnapVault is finally shipping. And as do its competitors, NetApp steps into the profitable service market with NGS (NetApp Global Services), which aims to help customers design and implement VTL, disaster recovery, and data protection projects.
What will NetApp come up with next? I have a hunch -- but I'll keep it to myself for now. Feel free to send me your best guess by e-mail or by joining me on The Storage Network blog.