In the end, the bidding war between EMC and NetApp for Data Domain resulted in an all cash deal worth $2.2 Billion, with EMC  Corp. as the proud new owner.  That is a lot of money.  The stockholders, including several VC firms stand to make a killing.

This really underscores the overall importance of backing up your data.  On a much smaller scale, I read an interesting post over at the consumerist from a few months back.  The gist is that a hard drive crashed, and despite the customer repeatedly stressing to the tech support how important the data was, nothing was backed up before being serviced.  The takeaways are: 1. Back your stuff up in advance.  Don’t wait for a failure or disaster to realize you need that data.  2. Be very choosey about who services your computer.  In the end, the Best Buy evangelist team is taking care of this customer, but that wouldn’t happen to everyone.