EMC said Wednesday it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Data Domain, ending a bitter battle with NetApp to take over the storage vendor.
In a brief statement, EMC said the $2.1 billion acquisition is expected to close this month.
NetApp, EMC's rival in the quest for Data Domain, criticized EMC, saying EMC already has the technology it is buying from Data Domain and will create confusion by adding Data Domain.
Data Domain is the leading vendor of deduplication technology, also called "dedupe," which removes duplicate information as data is stored, backed up or archived. This results in a significant decrease in storage capacity requirements.
EMC has at least three types of depuplication technology due to acquisitions and OEM deals.
Jay Kidd, chief marketing officer of NetApp, said EMC is ending up with a "salad bowl" of data deduplication technologies. "EMC has some deduping of its dedupe technology to do," Kidd said.
EMC currently OEMs and resells dedupe technology from FalconStor and Quantum, and has its own dedupe technology owing to its acquisition of Avamar.
"Employees in those companies have to be worried," Kidd said. "EMC is such a big part of all these, surely not all of those technologies will survive within EMC."
NetApp on May 20 said it planned to acquire Data Domain for $1.5 billion in cash and stock. EMC on June 1 bid $30 per share in cash, totaling $1.8 billion, for Data Domain. NetApp followed on June 3 with a cash and stock bid of $1.9 billion.
NetApp said earlier Wednesday that it is walking away from its proposed acquisition of Data Domain two days after EMC upped the bid for the dedupe technology leader on Monday to $33.50 per share, or a total of $2.1 billion.
Kidd called the final price of $2.1 billion for Data Domain very expensive. "We think it included a 'fear premium,'" he said. "EMC wanted to pay to make sure NetApp didn't get Data Domain. It was afraid NetApp would get the technology."
Kidd said NetApp did not pursue Data Domain just for the dedupe technology, but instead wanted to expand its footprint in a market where Data Domain was doing well.
"Data Domain was in areas we were not," he said. "Where we have primary storage sales, our secondary storage is also used. Data Domain was not attractive to us in those areas. Our goal is to gain more footprint for our primary storage business so we can sell more secondary storage in those areas."
