Last month, Dell acquired Ocarina Networks, a company that uses compression and de-duplication technologies to optimize storage.

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Skyera is also offering compression and deduplication to lower the total cost to storage content on a flash memory based enterprise storage system.

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Data reduction (compression and deduplication), once only implemented in backup storage, is showing up in some shops as a reality for primary storage.

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However even with data center developments such as compression, virtualization and deduplication the costs of on-line storage exceed that of local storage and the performance of on-line storage is significantly less than local storage.

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The compression ratio we get from Oracle or Sybase 1.5x to 2x while backend storage providers give us 10x.

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In addition, the Solidarity array carries out compression and in-line deduplication (a common theme in the new generation of flash memory storage).

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Utilizing a common de-dupe and compression architecture across your data center can enable your organization to use fewer network resources, reduce your storage footprint, and lower the power and cooling cost of storing your data.

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