I just returned from Symantec Vision, held June 9-13 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The weather wasn’t the only thing that was hot (some days topped out at nearly 110 degrees), but all the buzz was around data deduplication. In addition to SEPATON (with DeltaStor), there were no fewer than seven other vendors exhibiting under the deduplication banner. However, the focus of this buzz was on the larger “data center class” customers, where the following deduplication themes were highlighted:

• Simplicity of management
• “Scale As You Grow” grid concepts
• Availability of data

These are clearly points that SEPATON wholeheartedly agrees with. Naturally, Symantec was heavily promoting their branded technologies, but it’s interesting to note their intended direction, and compare that with what SEPATON has been advocating for years.

Lets’ see:

• Simplicity of management? Check. Our just-released v5.0 software (S2100-ES2 VTL, Site², and DeltaStor) sports increased levels of automation, wizards, and simple “click management” that is all presented through a single management pane.
• “Scale As You Grow” Grid? Check. Our very first products included grid technology, and we strongly leverage that ability with DeltaStor to simplify scaling out deduplication. The difference is we can make guarantees around performance, availability and recoverability of data that are difficult or impossible with a software-only play.
• Availability of data? Check. Combined with our fully-redundant hardware plant along with end-to-end integrity checks in the software, we can provide a compelling data availability solution.
  

The biggest difference that I noted: SEPATON’s software is available today, and much of what Symantec was preaching was part of their “Vision and Roadmap” presentation.

If you were there, let us know what you thought!