Update: Maui is now Atmos! See my post, EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up?

Remember all the talk about a year ago about EMC’s mysterious new storage product, code-name “Maui”? It was teased and pulled by Storagezilla, and rumored by one and all… Well, it wasn’t at EMC World, and people were starting to claim it might just be so much vapor.

Well, the rumor from unnamed people within EMC is that it’s coming. Really soon. Like next week. Here come the drums!

Apparently, it’s a software layer that manages a global pool of storage, including replication, synchronization, and protection. Think of it as super storage virtualization, an internal storage cloud. It sounds something like Cleversafe, and a little like one of my favorite cool flops, MangoSoft Medley. Of course, this is just what I’ve gathered from outside - no one will tell me anything officially!

Watching the announcements coming out of EMC World today, one bit of jargon stuck out at me:  The EMC bloggers are starting to refer to “data deduplication” as “3D”.  I had never heard this terminology before yesterday, but the EMCers are all using it, so it must be a popular term inside that company.  So I’m just giving my readers a heads-up: 3D is deduplication, at least at EMC.