How will the market for virtual tape libraries change?
Virtual tape libraries (VTL) have been the easiest way to integrate disk into existing data protection infrastructures. A few years ago, the Taneja Group predicted that deduplication technologies would rapidly penetrate into the VTL space. We just completed a report this month that sized the VTL market, and it also showed a split between products using deduplication technologies and those that don’t. This year, the revenue actuals for 2007 showed the last time standard VTL products that do not have deduplication capabilities generating more revenue than those that do. Once the switchover occurs in 2008, we’re going to see a rapid ramp of these deduplicating VTLs and a rapid shutdown of the VTL industry that does not include them. Within a year or two, there will be very little revenue being generated from VTL products that do not have deduplicating technologies. Almost all of the vendors that matter by 2009 will have this technology incorporated and will be selling most of their produc
