Dell Joins Rush to Offer SMEs Storage

DELL has joined a flurry of technology vendors that are rushing to offer simpler computer storage systems to small and medium-sized businesses.

The company, best known for selling personal computers direct over the Internet, has brought to market a storage system based on the iSCSI standard that offers a compromise between high-speed fibre- connected storage systems and relying on drives already built into servers.

The MD3000i system is priced from $6500 and could in theory be used with add-ons to store up to 18 terabytes of data on 45 disk drives.

Storage giant EMC and specialist vendor Network Appliance have also been increasingly targeting mid-sized firms with storage systems, aiming to capitalise on all businesses’ growing need to handle mountains of e-mails and large files and retain them in case they are needed for compliance purposes.

EMC began selling a new entry-level storage system in July, the N20, which it said companies could get up and running in 15 minutes and configure with either fibre or iSCSI connections. EMC, which employs 35 staff in New Zealand, says the N20 is well suited to the local market.

Network Appliance introduced two new systems on Tuesday, the FA2020 and FA2050, aimed at the same market. Nasdaq-listed Adaptec followed two days later with the launch of its Smap Server 700i iSCSI storage appliance.

But Dell’s storage product manager for New Zealand and Australia, Paul Berkovic, says the company still believes there is a gap in the market for its own simple, affordable product which — like EMC’s N20 — can be directly attached to an Ethernet network or used to build a storage area network (SAN). Bishop Tyrrell Anglican College in Fletcher, Australia is an early customer.

Mr Berkovic says Dell’s storage system offers an alternative to small businesses that might otherwise feel they had to outsource their IT infrastructure to specialist datacentre operators.

“Companies are struggling to deal with the exponential growth in their server and storage environments and small and medium-sized businesses are no exception.”

Research company IDC forecast the global market for supplying disk storage systems to mid-sized companies with revenues of US$50 million to $500 million would grow at a compound rate of more than 10 per cent — twice as fast as the overall storage market — to value US$6 billion by 2011.

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