I attended an event tonight put on by Optistor Technologies, a local vendor, which was centered on data de-duplication.  Reps from EMC, DataDomain, and SilverPeak were there, chatting with customers about how their respective products leverage de-duplication technology to save you money.  The keynote speaker was Keith Colburn, captain of the Wizard, from Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch and they had paired the evening with a spread of crab and prawns to snack on.  Anyway, Keith admitted during his speech that he “doesn’t know a thing about WAN, re-dupe (he meant de-dupe), or any of that stuff” but I think he did an admirable job discussing the importance of picking the right vendors to work with, ones who have adequate support resources and top notch technology.  He related some of the problems he’s had in the Bering Sea and how he attempts to mitigate risk as much as possible but sometimes discovers problems that he never anticipated.  That’s where the tie-ins with vendor choice came together.  All in all it was a fun event and I got a chance to catch up with some of the engineers and account managers I’ve dealt with in the past couple years.