NetApp cancels user conference, releases dedupe VTL

NetApp was supposed to hold its first-ever user conference, called NetApp Accelerate, in February, but yesterday put out a press release saying the conference has been cancelled.

“We had more customer interest in NetApp Accelerate than we anticipated,” said Elisa Steele, senior vice president, Corporate Marketing, in a statement. “But those same customers told us their travel budgets were being cut and it was difficult to commit to attending in today’s climate of economic uncertainty. For those reasons, we decided to cancel this year’s program.”

Wachovia financial analyst Aaron Rakers wonders if NetApp cancelled the conference to trim its own budget.

“While it is clear that economic conditions are resulting in more stringent expense controls at enterprises, we do find this as interesting; we believe possibly a result of NetApp’s own focus on operating expense control,”Rakers wrote in a note to clients.

NetApp said it will be release technical content that had already been prepared for the show between February and May next year.

Today, NetApp said its long-awaited data deduplication feature for its virtual tape library product has finally arrived. The feature, like NetApp’s primary storage dedupe, will be free for new and existing customers. NetApp has taken a contrarian approach to dedupe. It was the first major storage vendor to offer dedupe for primary data — building the capability into its operating system — but the last of the VTL vendors to add dedupe for backup.