Users have adopted data deduplication as an important first step in facilitating the transformation to disk-based backup. Users should continue to drive their suppliers to greater support of standards that will improve users’ ability to manage their information liabilities and assets. However, they should not regard deduplication as a cure-all for out-of-control data growth. Dedupe is most effective in data backup and recovery applications, where large volumes of unchanged data are being stored over and over. In other applications, such as ERP and CRM, dedup will not offer major advantages.

Tape vendors must aggressively adopt deduplication technologies in their portfolios, initially integrating into a blended disk/tape offering (e.g. VTL's) and eventually applying similar capacity utilization techniques to tape controllers. Importantly, unless these techniques are developed as industry standards, tape vendors will be overwhelmed by aggressive disk marketing.