According to Gartner Inc., prices for data de-duplication software range from about $9,000 per terabyte for Avamar's product to $19,000-$105,000 per terabyte in hardware products such as Data Domain's appliance and gateways.

The suggested retail price for a starter DXi3500 begins at $24,000 with 1.5 TB of capacity with an average retention time of two to three months.

Quantum said it is not releasing any other pricing until January.

"The fact that Quantum does both compression (through hardware) and data reduction is currently a differentiator in the market. Only a couple players currently do both (e.g., Avamar), though over the course of 2007, you can expect many more players to do both," Heidi Biggar, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc., in Milford, Mass., said via e-mail.

Biggar said Quantum's features will become necessary "check-off items" over time, and added that they will eventually not be differentiators.