"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.