Data deduplication is becoming more and more popular, replacing file virtualisation as generating the most interest from Fortune 1000 companies. File virtualisation remains high, remaining third, however, most respondents said that backup was the biggest time drain in the data center.

The current focus is still on backup, and in reducing tape backups in particular. This explains the prediction in shipments of hard drives across the next four years. Data deduplication has been factored into storage system and hard drive predictions, and neither forecast displays the technology making a dent.

There are conflicting trends that will push storage system growth to a rating of 55% to 60%, based on growth rates from past years. These rates include the focus on e-discovery and compliance in the storage market over the past six months.

It still isn't known how to apply Data deduplication, and allow for compliance and other things to still function approporiately. Encryption and other barriers also make things difficult, as it demands a specific order that must be carried out, since encrypted data cannot be deduplicated or compressed.

Right now, the only comfort is that things could be worse. Storage virtualisation, deduplication, and thin provisioning to some extent, are having an impact. If we didn't have those things, we would probably see the number of hard disk drives increase even faster than they are.

Theinfopro conducted a survey. In this survey, Data Domain Inc. came out as number one in data deduplication technology. EMC Corp.'s Avamar was behind Data Domain as the next highest use of the technology at 2%, Diligent Technologies Corp. was third with 1.3%. However, 9.3% of respondents was using any of the technology, and Data Domain accounted for 4%. Of those with deduplication technology in use, 42% indicated they had plans to expand in the next six months, 8.6% of those surveyed planned deployments in 30-to-90 days, 12% had a near-term plan, and 25% had a long-term plan.

Another survey used by TheInfoPro measures the number of vendor mentions by surveyists. This put EMC on top, above Data Domain with Diligent at the bottom, when considering near-term plans.