1. An apparatus, comprising: a processor; a memory; and an interface to connect the processor, the memory, and a set of logics, the set of logics comprising: a hardware identification logic configured to identify networking hardware supported by the apparatus to interact with a cloud-based computing environment through a computer network; a protocol identification logic configured to identify a protocol supported by the apparatus to communicate messages for the cloud-based computing environment through the networking hardware, the protocol comprising one or more of, a set of rules for communicating over the computer network, a set of procedure calls available for communicating over the computer network, and a set of application programming interfaces available for communicating over the computer network; and a de-duplication preparation logic configured to prepare a collaborative data de-duplication message to carry one or more of, data to be de-duplicated, and metadata concerning the data to be de-duplicated, where the collaborative data de-duplication message is to be provided to the cloud-based computing environment through the networking hardware according to the protocol, where the de-duplication preparation logic is configured to place the data to be de-duplicated in a first logical section of the message and to place the metadata concerning the data to be de-duplicated in a second logical section of the message, where the data to be de-duplicated comprises one or more of, a sub-block of data, an identifier of a sub-block of data, a hash of a sub-block of data, and a sample of a sub-block of data, and where the metadata concerning the data to be de-duplicated comprises one or more of, a boundary, a boundary character, a boundary algorithm identifier, a hash, a hash algorithm identifier, a sample, a sample algorithm identifier, and a dialect.