Thanks Chris for a great article.

A NetApp bid for Quantum would just start another bidding war with EMC, and NetApp would probably lose again as EMC's pockets would still be bigger even after the DD purchase. NetApp will need to find a target that has little EMC appeal but offers a growth opportunity. My bet is the tape part of StorageTek that got swallowed by Sun and is about to get swallowed by Oracle. Oracle seem to want to dump parts of the Sun hardware bizz, and NetApp would probably like a stab at the mainframe tape backup market (or even start a mainframe disk-to-disk backup market). Oracle might even see it as a way to defuse the NetApp lawsuit against Sun over the WAFL clone ZFS.

still thinking about sun matt. poor chap

Please, NetApp, don't buy Quantum. That dog don't hunt. Let that company and it's poorly designed and even more poorly performing product die the natural death it will have when EMC starts selling Data Domain. The product is a performance and reliability nightmare and many EMC customers that have purchased them have either turned them off or returned them. This is why EMC is buying DDUP; what it's currently using doesn't work! As soon as they get DDUP branded, they'll cut ties with Quantum as soon as they can.

Don't buy their leftover scraps. Do some due diligence and look at some products that actually work: pretty much anyone but Quantum.

Great article Chris. One correction. Dell does not license Quantum software. They SAID they were going to license it, but a year later what they're doing is reselling the EMC version of the Quantum system. (And I just don't get why anyone would buy a product from one company that's selling another company's product which is really another company's product.) This means that if EMC drops Quantum, Dell will be forced to resell them directly or drop them as well. I believe they will do the latter. (This is because I believe that Dell actually tested it and chose not to resell it directly, and is choosing to resell the EMC version so it looks like they stuck with their strategy.)

NetApp's statement is executive code for "How much? You must be joking. GAGF."

Gee Matty, so caught in a groove its become a rut for your cerebral wheels. Two storage makers arguing over who will pay too much for a de-dupe vendor has nothing to do with Sun.

There are a million possible investment decisions both companies could make and quite possibly one or two of those wont be Sun related. Your Quantum/EMC comments made perfect sense before the inevitable channelling of the neurons down the highway to the the same sunny but dull vacation spot you go to every year. So much wasted energy for a place you dont care for at all, and yet you keep going back there. You wanna go to Paris, but you keep ending up visiting the relatives in <insert favourite hell hole>.

How about you dont spoil the holiday for the rest of us this time, dont lose attention and just stay on topic? People will appreciate your obvious subject knowledge rather than the dreary diversions to satisfy your fixation.