When I talk about the various state-of-the-art capacity optimization solutions that are now appearing in the market, the same comment usually arises: “Isn’t this the same as zip?” Or a long-tenured storage pro will remind me that, “Stacker died out a long time ago, so why is this any different?”

These are good points: The difference between traditional compression and modern data deduplication is somewhat hazy. And it doesn’t help that various implementations fall all along the spectrum from “mildly interesting” to “cutting edge!”

Over 100 years ago, Samuel Morse defined a coding scheme for text messages. He optimized the efficiency