Looking to offer small and mid-size businesses sophisticated storage technology, EMC today announced the NetWin 110, the
second member to a network-attached storage NAS family tailored to run Microsoft Windows software.
Why NAS now? Two reasons: First, your business’s data is at ever-increasing risk from viruses, power outages and acts of nature, and the need for backup and recovery products has never been more evident. Second, the sheer volume of digital data is driving storage needs.
EMC NAS Product Marketing Manager Tom Joyce said the 110 is designed for
customers who would like to add storage in increments, or for those who want
to consolidate low-end server and storage. “We took a look at this end of the market and decided to do it with Microsoft.” SMBs, Joyce said, want better data protection but they want it to “look and behave like Windows.”
To address the needs of the SMB market, Joyce said EMC had to accomplish three things:
- The price had to be low enough to allow SMBs to acquire the technology.
- It had to be easy to set up and use. (Joyce said the 110 doesn’t require that you have an IT department or consultant to install and manage it.)
- It had to grow awareness so that SMBs would see data as a valuable asset.
The introduction also comes in response to an explosion in Windows-based NAS storage
in the past year, since EMC and Microsoft announced
the NetWin 200, a dual-processor system also geared for SMBs.
“We decided we would focus our efforts in that part of market,” Joyce said
of the snowballing Windows NAS demand. “There are an awful lot of customers
that want something that’s Windows-based and there are a tremendous amount
of benefits to it as we look to things like [Microsoft] Exchange.”
The box is based on Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003, which boasts
features such as Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service for local snapshots.
Moreover, it backs up data faster and more reliably than comparable tape
storage offerings, and a customer can install it fairly easily and in
minutes, Joyce said.
The system can consolidate files, databases and print services on Microsoft
Exchange 2003 and is optimized to run LEGATO RepliStor for data protection
at branch offices, LEGATO NetWorker to provide backup to disk and EMC’s
OnCourse content distribution software.
The NetWin 110 is a
single processor (2.4 GHz Intel Pentium-4) server that directly attaches to both the CLARiiON and
CLARiiON CX EMC servers for the midrange. Its list price is $6,100. Joyce said that NetWin 110 be sold only through EMC partners.
Unlike the NetWin 200, the 110 will be available only through channels. For example, it will be sold through authorized EMC
distributors such as Arrow Electronics, Avnet Hall-Mark and Tech Data.
Research firms such as Forrester have said the SMBs in 100 to 1,000 employee range are clamoring for
affordable infrastructure with high-end storage features. Larger vendors such
as EMC, IBM and HP are positioned to offer that.
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