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This section takes on late-breaking business and partnership news written for industry insiders.

Each month, InfoStor rounds up timely new product announcements, providing a buyer?s guide for professionals.

As noted in my last column, cloud computing is a hot topic in the general IT space, and cloud-based storage is (arguably) one of the hottest topics in the storage space, at least in terms of end-user interest, as opposed to actual buying.

In an effort to clarify its stance on data deduplication, Dell is answering questions about its partnerships with EMC and Quantum, recently began shipping new disk-based backup appliances based on CommVault's Simpana 8.0 software, and hinted at an upcoming Dell/EMC system based on Quantum's deduplication architecture.

A global manufacturing company with a large number of remote branch offices with limited network connectivity wanted to consolidate technology back to its main data centers in Michigan, Texas, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Singapore using disk-based backup solutions.

Hewlett-Packard has revamped its entry-level storage line by consolidating the HP All-in-One (AiO) and ProLiant Storage Server products onto a single, unified storage platform.

NEC has introduced application-aware deduplication as a new feature of its HYDRAstor line of grid storage platforms in order to squeeze inefficiencies out of the data stream and boost data reduction ratios.

Quantum has added a disk-based backup system to its DXi family and upgraded its management software in an attempt to extend its data deduplication and replication technologies for customers with remote locations.

Data for the chart below came from the results of a survey of 146 IT professionals, conducted by IT Brand Pulse as part of its ongoing series of Leader Surveys.

Storage and server administrators need better, or deeper, visibility into the SAN infrastructure in order to maximize performance and efficiency in virtual environments.

There are plenty of options available, including WAN acceleration, remote access, data deduplication, VTLs, disk backup targets, and remote replication technologies.