Storage News

Will NetApp Tackle Unstructured Data?

NetApp's acquisition of Bycast looks like an investment in scale-out storage aimed at tackling the growth of unstructured data. In this report, GigaOM questions if NetApp is ready to ride the commodity hardware cost curve embraced by large web and cloud providers.

"For NetApp, one of the appealing features about Bycast's offering is that it doesn’t necessarily replace the underlying storage systems, but rather aggregates existing solutions, including those by NetApp. IBRIX, which was once adopted by customers on a range of hardware platforms including a long relationship with Dell before the HP acquisition, now seems to be tightly packed with HP hardware. And EMC's offerings do not come in a software-only flavor."