During the economic recession of 2008 and 2009, brought on by a collapse of the U.S. real estate market, business mergers and acquisitions were few and far between.

Uncertainty in the stock market left what few offers there were as cash-only deals, a rare opportunity. Yet, one tech company not only got acquired in 2009 for a sizable amount of cash, it surprised its suitor with more powerful technology than the acquiring firm thought it was buying.

The company at the time was Data Domain Corp., a data archiving and deduplication specialist, and its suitors were NetApp Inc. and EMC Corp. Earlier in 2009, Data Domain agreed to be acquired by NetApp for $1.5 billion in cash and stock, but when EMC upped the ante with a bid of $2.4 billion in cash, NetApp folded its hand.

What neither company knew at the time was that Data Domain had made significant enhancements to its technology.

“Behind the scenes we had a system coming out that was double in size, and neither EMC nor NetApp knew about that,” recalled Rich Colbert (pictured), field chief technology officer at Dell EMC and a former executive with Data Domain. “Once the deal closed, they found out that our size and performance had doubled at the same time.”

Colbert spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed the importance of architecture in cloud storage environments, a move away from complexity toward simpler systems, and the need for information-technology departments to be part of the digital transformation discussion. (* Disclosure below.)

Transition from disks and tape

Colbert’s tale is symbolic of the twists and turns the storage industry has taken over the past decade. Ten years after the acquisition, the storage industry has undergone its own transformation from backups being stored on disk and then archived to tape to the cloud-enabled storage appliance that Data Domain offers today.

“What we’ve learned is that the architecture really matters when you get to the cloud, the efficient use of resources, the ability to do things in a cloud-like way,” Colbert said. “In 2017 and 2018, we saw a big acceleration in our adoption in the cloud because we have adapted our architecture to be more cloud friendly and more cost effective for our customers to deploy.”

Becoming cloud friendly has also meant becoming simpler to use. Ten years ago, complexity was considered to have merit and an advantage over the competition. That scenario is well in the past, according to Colbert.

“It was a badge of honor to be working with complex, and people just don’t have the time for that anymore,” Colbert said. “There’s a lot of IT generalists and folks that are out there who don’t want to go to training class five or 10 days out of the year to learn how to use a product.”

As Colbert speaks with customers, he is finding that IT organizations are not always being invited to the table when it comes to the cloud evolution and digital transformation. This can cause problems in data storage and backup.

“The number one thing that I’m talking about with my customers, when we’re talking about this tectonic shift in the way that things are being done, is that IT and the digital transformation or cloud team need to speak early, often and proactively about how they do data protection,” Colbert concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Dell EMC. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell EMC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE