My guess is there is too much outside pressure to just be a great primary storage supplier and [NetApp] will need to or want to get better at the secondary storage tier. If so do so by investing in secondary storage internally with just a little external help. What they have works fine but obviously it is not where they want it to be. They could invest additional development dollars in Open Systems SnapVault (OSSV) and their various dedupe technologies, make a few small purchases to get them there faster; Ocarina, Permabit, Exagrid or Sepaton and maybe even SyncSort who makes an excellent block level incremental backup solution similar to what OSSV does.

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