Storage vendors suddenly focus on SMB!

Here are the latest news on the storage vendors chasing the SMB market. I deal with a lot of SMB scenarios and know for sure that it is not just shipping offerings in the market but also articulating them to sell effectively to the customers, si the key to expanding presence together with the SMB market. The SMB market is a lot punishing and will not spare you, shoudl you screw up:

Hitachi:

The Hitachi AMS Series 2000 delivers up to 4x the performance compared to prior generations, and also offers storage consolidation for iSCSI, NAS, and Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) connections. The AMS Series 2000 is comprised of three models: the Hitachi AMS 2100, the Hitachi AMS 2300, and the Hitachi AMS 2500. The entire portfolio of midrange storage systems meets the benchmarking standard "Five 9's" of availability, 99.999 percent uptime. The new Hitachi AMS Series 2000 delivers the following technology breakthroughs:

* The industry’s Hitachi Dynamic Load Balancing Controller turbocharges the storage system to peak levels of performance with virtually no-touch. Unlike asymmetrical controller designs of traditional midrange storage systems, the breakthrough Hitachi Dynamic Load Balancing Controller eliminates typical bottlenecks and “hot spots” that can decrease I/O response times by monitoring utilization rates of each controller and dynamically enables workload balancing.

* The industry’s first 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Backplane in a midrange storage platform, providing the fastest, most cost-effective way to process and transfer data through a storage controller engine. This breakthrough technology curbs the architectural limitations of arbitrated loop designs with support for up to 32 3Gb/s high-performance point-to-point links that deliver a blistering 9600 MB/sec of bandwidth and dramatically speed data transfer.

“With the depth and breadth of their midrange portfolio and strong channel partnership culture, Hitachi Data Systems is uniquely positioned in the midrange storage market,” said Layne Hellickson, storage solutions consultant, Advanced Systems Group. “We’re proud to partner with Hitachi Data Systems and help meet the evolving needs of our joint customers, while pushing the evolution of the storage market forward.”

* “Spin down; Spin up” Power Savings Feature that enables hard disk drives to be powered down when not being accessed by a business application, and powered up quickly when the application requires them. In the face of rising energy costs and datacenter power consumption, the “spin down” feature significantly reduces the cost of storing and delivering information, thereby minimizing carbon footprints and cooling costs. This provides an ideal solution for customers with large archived data or virtual tape libraries where data is accessed infrequently.

* Optimized for Virtual Server Environments through the combination of its Dynamic Load Balancing Controller and SAS backplane, the Hitachi AMS Series 2000 addresses the impact that server virtualization technology places on traditional storage architectures, such as performance imbalances, provisioning difficulties, and overall quality-of-service issues, and negates current architectural shortcoming of traditional midrange platforms.

IBM: Why wait? Get financed for your storage needs! (Our friend, doug reporting here)

Storage Virtualization Leadership

Since its introduction in 2003, IBM has shipped over 14,000 SVC engines running in more than 4,600 SVC systems. Complementing the announcement today of SVC Entry Edition, IBM is announcing it has accomplished a new world record SPC disk-based benchmark that demonstrates the extraordinary scalability of SVC and continues IBM's leadership in storage virtualization with the fastest system tested in the industry. The new benchmark not only beats the previous SVC measurement but does so with IBM's new Space-Efficient Virtual Disk thin provisioning technology enabled.(2) The new SPC-1 benchmark of SVC running with IBM DS4700 disk supports 274,997.58 SPC-1 IOPS(TM) per second.(3)

IBM is also announcing the interoperability of SVC with the new IBM XIV Storage System, the IBM System Storage DS5000 and the IBM System z/VSE. New interoperability support for SVC also includes Microsoft Hyper-V, HDS Universal Storage Platform and HP XP20000/XP24000.

SVC Entry Edition is planned to be generally available on November 21.

IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing business segment of IBM is offering "Why Wait," a no interest no payments for 90 days deferral plan to support eligible customers acquiring IBM System Storage now through the end of 2008. The financing structure is a 36 month fair market value lease. Customers installing the new hardware under the promotion terms make no payments for 90 days, and then make 36 even monthly payments. Customers must be credit qualified, lease the eligible equipment with IBM Global Financing for the promotional term and structure, and install the product in participating countries by Dec 31, 2008. Terms and conditions may vary by country. For information on easy funding options for clients seeking to finance these SVC Entry Edition, visit: www.ibm.com/financing/whywait

OnStor dives into SMB pool:

ONStor is looking to tap into midmarket demand for storage solutions that deliver cost-savings and performance efficiencies with its new Cougar series network-attached storage gateway appliances, specifically designed for the price-conscious SMB market.

Hewlett-Packard’s StorageWorks Simple SAN, announced in April 2008, and Dell’s EqualLogic purchase suggested that vendors were eager to go after the SMB and midmarket storage space. HP’s recent announcement that it will buy LeftHand Networks to add virtualization capabilities to its lineup solidified the importance of the SMB and SME to major vendors’ bottom lines, and now even smaller vendors such as FalconStor are getting in on the action, analysts say.

Source