Storage products from Dell’s Compellent unit will integrate technologies from Dell’s earlier acquisitions to better enable these products to target large enterprise customers.
Data compression and deduplication technology from Ocarina Networks and a global file system from Exanet will be integrated into Compellent products, said Marty Sanders, executive director for technology and services at Dell Compellent, on Thursday.
“The more that you can integrate all these technologies into a single platform, the better you can scale in the enterprise,” he added.
While the integration of Exanet technology is expected in the second half of this year, the inclusion of Ocarina deduplication and compression technology is likely to be complete by next year, Sanders said.
Dell completed the acquisition of Compellent Technologies, a vendor of tiered storage, in February. The company acquired Ocarina and Exanet last year.
Data deduplication is a method for eliminating redundant data. Before the acquisition by Dell, Compellent was developing its own deduplication and compression algorithms, and was also working in the area of a global file system. Using technology from Ocarina will now help get deduplication faster into Compellent products, Sanders said.
The acquisition by Dell has helped accelerate the road map for Compellent products, said Brian Bell , executive director for worldwide sales at Dell Compellent.
Deduplication and compression coupled with Compellent’s data tiering technology will save additional space on storage systems, Sanders said.
As it integrates its acquisitions, Dell is also exploring using Compellent’s data tiering and other technologies across its other storage products, Sanders said. The process could take up to two years, depending on the product lines, he added.
Dell is working to integrate its acquisitions so that the technologies and products work together, and users don’t have to deal with silos of storage, Bell said. This would require giving customers a single management layer, a common file system, and deduplication and other functions across storage platforms, he added.
Dell will continue to maintain the Compellent brand and a team around the Compellent products, because Compellent is a strong brand with customers, Sanders said. Dell adopted a similar strategy after its 2008 acquisition of EqualLogic, a provider of storage area networks, he added.
