Dell acquires Ocarina Networks
Dell has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Ocarina Networks. The official news is here.
This is an interesting deal because the Ocarina data deduplication and optimization solution works primarily with NAS systems. Files, to be more specific. It said in the website that the deal was to complement the EqualLogic box. As far as we know, EqualLogic is an iSCSI box. This could only mean 2 things
1. Ocarina Networks has a solution that optimize blocks in a SAN
OR
2. EqualLogic is coming out with its own NAS
And it will be even more interesting to see how that pans out, because Dell also resells the EMC Celerra multiprotocol storage array. There is going to be plenty of fodder for the reporters in the coming months.
We at Real Data Matrix are enthusiastic because we were one of the very firsts in this region to believe in Ocarina's solution. We are in fact, the South East Asia reseller of Ocarina Networks solutions. It is a fantastic product, and when it comes to true data reduction, no one else comes close.
In the Oil and Gas industry, files used in seismic applications are huge. They can range from a few hundred Megabytes to tens of Gigabytes. Therefore, upstream customers have a voracious appetite for more, and more, and more storage. Yet, it is not good business practice to purchase more and more storage. Traditional data deduplication solutions do not work well with seismic files. In fact, they suck badly.
Enter Ocarina Networks ECOsystem. We tested Ocarina in a very prominent Oil and Gas customer in Malaysia against some more well known brands and we were able to get more than 70% data reduction with Ocarina. The other 2 solutions, only managed less than 5% of storage capacity reduction.
The Ocarina Networks optimizers solution are able to reclaim between 500GB to 2TB of capacity per day, depending on the model. If the price of 1TB enterprise storage costs RM10,000 (that about USD3000), you can theoretically get back your money for managing existing storage.
That is the power of Ocarina Networks content-aware data optimization solution.
