The email below appeared in my inbox yesterday. The EDL/DL3D 1500/3000 has officially been discontinued. It was obvious from the moment EMC purchased Data Domain that the Quantum stuff was dead, but it took time for EMC to finally admit this. The strongest statement came in Frank Slootman’s TechTarget interview. Clearly the EMC/QTM relationship was a rocky one from the beginning and so the outcome is not surprising.
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I find it amusing that just over a year ago, EMC was promoting the Quantum technology and said that “These offerings compete directly with Data Domain and are sharply differentiated by their superior, policy-based de-duplication capabilities, including de-duplication checks between local and remote sites, better scalability, Five-9s availability, and unmatched service and support.” (Local copy of the source, original source.) EMC has since completed the acquisition of Data Domain and Quantum is now the pariah and Data Domain is the best thing ever. Frank Slootman, VP of EMC’s backup group, said in the interview linked above, “We’re swapping a lot of those [Quantum-based] boxes out at zero revenue. We’ve taken out about a dozen and we’ll continue to take out a similar number this quarter. Customers don’t want it.” Wow, so much for sharply differentiated products with superior technology! I feel sorry for end users who bought into EMC’s DL3D story and now have to deal with a forklift upgrade.