In the aftermath of yesterday's defeat, NetApp chief marketing officer Jay Kidd said in an interview with Computerworld that like EMC, his company was not looking to purchase deduplication technology, which it already has. NetApp wanted a leading technology vendor that could help increase part of its portfolio of products.

Kidd also restated that his company had a ceiling on how much it could justify paying for Data Domain, and it had reached it. "You never want to judge the level of sanity of your opponent. Many people will say EMC overpaid for them. We certainly feel they did. I think it will be a challenge for EMC to realize the ROI at this price," Kidd said.

Not everyone agrees.

Robert Stevenson, managing director of storage research at TheInfoPro, said while EMC isn't likely to get a return on its $2.1 billion investment over the next 12 to 18 months, the numbers pan out over a five-year period. Stevenson justifies his numbers by explaining that most enterprise-class deduplication implementations cost about $1 million, plus an additional 15% to 25% of that for ongoing annual maintenance costs. Over the next few years, upward of 70% of Fortune 1000 companies will have deduplication as part of their backup scheme, which will represent about $2 billion in revenue.

"You ask storage professionals what their top priority projects are, and they'll tell you it's reclaim underutilized storage assets," Stevenson said, noting that deploying dedpulication is the number one way to regain that unused capacity.

In a survey of 305 enterprise-class or mid-sized companies completed in May, TheInfoPro reported that backup system redesign was the second highest project priority cited by Fortune 1000 companies, and that deduplication is the number one project in that backup redesign. Currently, 30% of Fortune 1000 companies surveyed have deduplication in place and 40% plan to adopt it in the next six months to a year.

According to Stevenson, 20% of 60,000 mid-sized companies in the U.S. have deduplication technology in place and 35% are considering deploying it in the near term. And the leading vendor in that deduplication space? None other than Data Domain, he said. EMC will not mess with that kind of success, he said.

Stevenson said he expect EMC will be true to its word and will run Data Domain as a separate entity, infusing money into R&D and increasing sales through its worldwide distribution channels and sales force. Eventually, EMC will likely integrate the deduplication technology into its various backup offerings, including Tivoli Storage Manager backup and archive software and its Legato NetWorker product.