HP Encroaches on Information Optimization

December 6, 2011

Does Hewlett Packard know about Vivisimo and its “information optimization” marketing hook? Maybe. I don’t know what information optimization meant when Vivisimo used the term, and now that HP is cattle rustling the phrase, I am even more confused.

The source of my befuddlement is the write up “HP Dedupe Comes Of Age.” The article contains some quite amazing lingo. I thought I was tracking with the current crop of buzzwords and poobah phraseology. Wow, was I incorrect. I may as well be trying to speak a slang version of Breton.

The notion of deduplication is an interesting one. The idea is that if the same datum exists in two or more places, why not store it once? Great idea. However, some information cannot be easily identified as a duplicate. For example, is a document with the same words and paragraphs but in a different order a duplicate? Yes. You may lose the logic. No. You may get no savings. Entities can be equally slippery. For example, is I.B.M, IBM, and Ibm the same entity? Is each different? You get the idea.

HP wants to use Autonomy’s $10 billion technology along with its own. I am okay with that type of cross pollenization. However, here’s what puzzles me:

“This allows for seamless scalability, enabling nodes to be added to the configuration without downtime. This is in marked contrast to first-phase scale-up deduplication appliances (what HP refers to as Deduplication 1.0) that, after hitting the maximum capacity threshold, require a disruptive “forklift” upgrade or additional standalone appliances to expand—introducing inefficiency, downtime, and management overhead issues. This architecture also lends itself to high availability, which HP is delivering. Node failure is eliminated by pairing nodes within a couplet, so the surviving node can take over if its companion node fails.”

The quote is from the article. What the heck does this mean? Another interesting chunk of nonsense is the use of the word “hydrating” in this passage:

The other thing is the vision of StoreOnce — i.e. that you can deduplicate everywhere (primary, secondary and backup) without having to re-hydrate data, says Vellante. “This is a futures statement but on paper HP..

In one write up, HP uses a puzzling phrase “owned” by Vivisimo and confuses me. This is the new HP?

Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2011

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