EMC Thinks Small is Mighty

Small business is big business. Just ask EMC how important small business is to its bottom line. The company recently announced a new line of storage products for SMBs because it wants to compete in the fastest-growing segment of the storage market.

The new products initiative, dubbed the EMC Insignia line, has been in development for the past year and is headed by Larry Zulch, an EMC vice-president and general manager.

The new products, Zulch said, are “not repackaging &#151 they’re new versions re-engineered for the SMB market.” The goal of the project was to come up with solutions that are easy to use and “priced right,” Zulch said.

The new EMC Insignia line (emcinsignia.com) consists of a half-dozen products designed to help SMBs “store, manage, protect and share vital business information.”

EMC CLARiiON AX Series disk arrays offer networked storage for Fibre Channel or iSCSI starting at $5,500.

EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition works with the CLARiiON arrays to simplify management of Microsoft Exchange Server data, provide fast recovery from an Exchange server failure and make migration to Exchange Server 2003 a simple process. Pricing starts at $1,995.

EMC Retrospect, the latest version of Dantz’s flagship product, helps SMBs protect servers, round-the-clock applications, desktops and notebooks with point-in-time restores, onsite and offsite media management, and encryption of backup media with AES, starting at $399-$1,449.

EMC RepliStor SMB Edition guards information against a hardware failure or a site-wide disaster. Replicates data between two Windows computers locally or remotely across the Internet and maintains a continuously updated copy. Pricing starts at $995 per node.

EMC VisualSRM SMB Edition storage resource management software presents a consolidated view of a company’s storage and hosts automated policies to manage it. Pricing starts at $995.

EMC eRoom SMB Edition collaboration software provides a browser-accessed, secure collaborative workspace for sharing information, managing projects and other uses. Pricing starts at $995 for 10 users.

CLARiiON AX100/i, Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition and Retrospect are available immediately from authorized EMC resellers and EMC’s new Velocity SMB channel partners. RepliStor SMB Edition, VisualSRM SMB
Edition and eRoom SMB Edition will be available later in the first quarter.

Adapted from enterprisestorageforum.com.com/.