Guest Column: New Simpana 8 Deduplication Features Should Give Enterprises Pause On Their Deduplication Strategy

By Jerome M Wendt, DCIG, LLC

Today's release of CommVault Simpana 8 continues to reflect CommVault's commitment to deliver enterprise data protection and management using a single product with multiple application modules. Yet it is Simpana 8's new global block-based data deduplication feature and new ability to deduplicate data stored to tape that is likely to raise excitement. Making these features integral to Simpana 8, CommVault does more than just give enterprises another deduplication option or simply lower tape costs. Instead it starts to put CommVault on a collision course with deduplicating storage appliances and even traditional tape devices while giving organizations new reason to ponder their longer term deduplication strategy.

Data protection in whatever form it takes is becoming almost inextricably linked with data deduplication. In this respect, Simpana is no stranger to deduplication as it has provided file-based deduplication (single instance store or SIS) for some time. But the big news in Simpana 8 is the introduction of client-side, global block-based data deduplication and extension of deduplication to tape.