EMC have finally consolidated a hardware software solution for SMB organisations following the purchase last year of Dantz.
EMC have introduced a new line of Insignia storage hardware and software that enable small and medium businesses of up to 20 employees to store, manage, protect, and share business information.
The EMC Insignia products are designed specifically to address SMB’s needs spanning critical information management and storage issues. Low cost the EMC Insignia products have beeneveloped to work individually, together, and with third-party software and hardware.
In October 2004, EMC acquired Dantz Development who developed the Retrospect backup and recovery software. Since then the Company has combined the extensive SMB market knowledge acquired through Dantz with EMC’s expertise in information management and storage to create the Insignia product line.
Joe Tucci, Chairman, President, and CEO of EMC, said, “Small and medium businesses are faced with the same challenges as our enterprise customers – explosive information growth, the need to improve productivity and lower costs, and a requirement for simplicity. EMC Insignia brings EMC expertise in these areas to a new and adjacent market at appropriate price points. Our new solution enable SMBs to focus on growing their businesses rather than expending unnecessary effort to store, manage, protect, and share their information.”
Larry Zulch, Vice President and General Manager, EMC Insignia, and former CEO and co-founder of Dantz Development will manage the EMC Insignia business. The EMC Insignia line includes the following new hardware and software products:
EMC CLARiiON AX Series disk arrays enable SMBs to consolidate and share storage efficiently among multiple computers and capitalise on the advantages of backup to disk. The combination of EMC networked storage for fibre channel or iSCSI delivers easy-to-use, highly reliable data storage at an affordable price.
EMC Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition information management software works with the EMC CLARiiON AX series to simplify management of Microsoft Exchange Server data, provide fast recovery from an Exchange server failure, and make migration to Exchange Server 2003 a straightforward and streamlined process achievable in just a few hours in many cases.
EMC Retrospect gives SMBs a simple but powerful way to protect servers, 24×7 applications, desktops, and notebooks. The backup and recovery software is renowned for its ease of use, self-adjusting backup operations, accurate point-in-time restores, simplified onsite and offsite media management, and encryption of backup media with government-certified AES.
EMC RepliStor SMB Edition guards SMB’s vital information against hardware failure or site-wide disaster. The software provides easy-to-manage replication of data between two Windows computers locally or remotely across the Internet and maintains a continuously updated copy.
EMC VisualSRM SMB Edition helps businesses stay ahead of information growth and rein in costs while meeting storage needs. This storage resource management software presents a consolidated view of a company’s storage and hosts automated policies to manage it.
EMC eRoom SMB Edition brings efficiency to how employees, partners, and suppliers work together. The collaboration software provides a browser-accessed, highly secure collaborative workspace to share information, manage projects, and deliver higher-quality products and services.
“We’re seeing the IT needs of small and medium businesses mirroring those of large enterprises, but on a different scale,” said Ray Boggs, VP of SMB Research at IDC. “SMBs just don’t have the financial and IT resources to deploy the same comprehensive approaches to storage. Small and mid-size firms definitely prefer suppliers that can provide comprehensive solutions, but they also like the option of adding capabilities a la carte as needed. The EMC Insignia line of hardware and software products offers SMBs the flexibility of a complete portfolio of capabilities that work together and can be put into place when the time is right.”
Pricing and Availability
The CLARiiON AX100/i, Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition, and Retrospect are available immediately from authorised EMC resellers and EMC Velocity SMB channel partners. RepliStor SMB Edition, VisualSRM SMB Edition, and eRoom SMB Edition will be available in Q1 ’06. Pricing for the CLARiiON AX100/i starts at AU$8289 / NZ$9028, Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition costs AU$3006 / NZ$3274, RepliStor SMB Edition costs AU$1500 / NZ$1634 per node, VisualSRM SMB Edition starts at AU$1500 / NZ$1634, eRoom SMB Edition starts at AU$1500 / NZ$1634 for 10 users, and Retrospect starts at AU$601 / NZ$655. Available in ANZ from April 1, 2006.