The other question is: Why EMC did not just buy Quantum? Clearly EMC is not afraid to buy the technology that it wants and has done so in the past. Why not Quantum? For one reason, there is a difference between a $100 million loan and assuming responsibility for all of Quantum's debt. Frankly that could be the sole reason.
The other reason may be that there is some truth to the rumor that EMC is doing something on its own. It already has the Avamar technology and it has de-duplication technology in the Celera, so a jump to a VTL-based de-duplication option does not seem like a far one to make. In this case, EMC needs Quantum until that need is met internally. If this is the case, lets hope that EMC has a migration strategy for its Quantum customers and that Quantum has planned on how to sustain itself post-EMC, because I think the odds are better than 50/50 that there will be a post-EMC.
Of course the other side of the 50 percent is that "it is what it is." You can counter that EMC has no future VTL de-duplication plans other than Quantum. For some reason EMC has never owned its VTL technology outright. The original Clariion Disk Library was a Falconstor OEM, and, of course, now there's the relationship with Quantum. Maybe EMC thinks the backup-to-disk market is just a passing phase and what we really should be doing is backing up to SSD? Maybe EMC knows its limitations and just does not want to focus its development efforts on that market right now -- it certainly does have enough other stuff going on.
If I were to place a bet though, I'd go with the former -- D2D is just too attractive for EMC to ignore and it has too much of the surrounding pieces of the puzzle not to make a go of it with its own technology.
So what's the net for the users? Is Quantum any safer than they were before? Sure. While it remains to be seen if the holders of the debt will take the offer, for now it looks like the albatross that was the $160 million convertible debt is off of Quantum's back. The decision, like before, really comes down to the technology. Who is going to meet your needs for simplicity, performance, and scale -- and how much of each do you need, and can your data center deliver? And as before, make sure you are comfortable with the business environment that the providers operate under or through.
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