NetApp unveils new storage solutions to MSEs

Bangalore, Sep 11 (UNI) Eyeing the fast growing market for data storage appliances in Mid size Enterprises space, NetApp today unveiled two new products designed to help simplify data management and maximise existing IT investments for the MSEs.

Briefing newspersons on the new products, NetApp Managing Director Soumitra Agarwal said MSEs external disk storage market was expected to grow to US Dollar six billion by 2011, a compound annual growth rate of 10.9 per cent. While demand will be tremendous, MSEs face a dilemma of how to manage and protect all the data without corresponding increase in head count.

"Our new products will solve this dilemma once for all as deployment and auditing services is designed to help simplify data management and maximise existing IT investments. Unlike the products of our competitors, the investment made by the MSEs will stay as it is easy to maximise existing investments," he said.

The MSE Indian market for the product was at 35 million dollars per annum and users for such a storage system in the MSE space were estimated at 100,000. The pricing level starts from Rs 10 lakh for a entry level product in the 2020 range, he said.

The MD said that NetApp brings to the market an enterprise-class storage technology that easily scales to help the customers maximise their data infrastructure while minimising complexity.

The MSEs with an employee strength of 100 to 1000 manages multiple servers and supports the data storage needs of the employees. The new NetApp products help these companies to tighten integration between major applications and the storage platform as well as reduce overall costs by fully optimising IT assets, he said.

NetApp Country Manager India and SAARC Gerorge Thomas said the Sunnyvale, California based company had a 20 per cent market share in Enterprise level storage products and the Indian facility of the 2.8 billion dollar company that was launched in 2004 had an head count of 600.

He said the advantage of his company's products was that they were easily scalable as same product was supplied to all customers from top 100 to units in SME sector. "The single most important benefit NetApp offers customers with these new solutions and services is the ability to accomplish more with fewer resources," he added.

UNI