Originating Author: David Floyer
During the 5/22/07 Peer Incite research meeting on IBM's announcement there was a consensus that storage vendors would not allow direct access to data except through the storage controller. After the research meeting Fred Moore wrote “[Storage] vendors have little to gain or to differentiate themselves by being open.”
Unfortunately for storage vendors' long term benefit, this is probably going to be true; short term illusions of competitive gain will trump establishing a larger market. As a result this will limit the use of deduplicated storage by software vendors. Developers are likely to find that it will be much more attractive to be able to directly control specialist deduplication hardware in the server or appliances.
Action Item: Keep technology options for the placement of deduplication open. Placement in the storage controller may be best for archive applications. Data that is shared between multiple applications may be better served by server based specialist depulication access methods and engines.
