It's over. I think. NTAP withdrew its bid for DDUP

NetApp officially pulled out of its bidding for Data Domain today, allowing the EMC acquisition to move forward.

A tweet from Steve Duplessie said that he thought this would get “even more interesting.”  Is he hinting at what some have hinted at?

The rumor I have is that the NTAP/DDUP deal was supposed to be a 2-fer.  NTAP was to buy DDUP, then HP was to buy NTAP.  Now HP’s probably not as interested in NTAP without DDUP.  Could they possibly put in an 11th hour bid for DDUP AND NTAP?  Anything is liable to happen in this crazy world.

I’m going to post my thoughts about EMC owing DDUP in another post.

Written by W. Curtis Preston (@wcpreston), four-time O'Reilly author, and host of The Backup Wrap-up podcast. I am now the Technology Evangelist at Sullivan Strickler, which helps companies manage their legacy data