HP and EMC offer new services and wares
HP and EMC offer new services and wares
Rivals, Hewlett-Packard and EMC are planning to release new offerings, including pay-per-use pricing from HP and upgraded hardware from EMC
EMC's new hardware products will be faster midrange and high-end disk arrays, upgraded data copying for midrange arrays, and new devices that link two types of technologies.
They also plan to install upgrades to its Centera line of storage equipment designed to help meet compliance requirements, additional management software for its midrange Clariion arrays, and Clariion support for emerging industry standards.
The Storage Management Interface Specification (SMI-S) aims to make it easier for software to manage equipment from multiple manufacturers.
In the HP camp, they have announced "utility pricing" for its midrange Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family and a new line of tape libraries, which are robotic devices that contain multiple tape drives and cartridges. It is hoped that the EVA family will offer metering technology that tracks capacity usage and lets customers pay only for the capacity they use.
A pay-per-use option has been available on HP's high-end storage arrays for large organisations.
HP's ESL E-Series tape libraries will be available with Ultrium 460 and SDLT 320 drives and feature improved density.
These announcements come at a time when interest in hardware is reducing and software is increasing, because companies want to maximise the use of existing storage and reduce personnel costs.
Over the last few months, EMC has aggressively improved its software strategy by acquiring back-up and recovery software maker Legato Systems, content-management firm Documentum, and Vmware, which manufactures software to make server computers more flexible.
EMC is aiming to release a new family of NAS gateway products shortly, and they are also planning to unveil high-performing Clariion machines without higher prices, as well as new high-end Symmetrix storage arrays that have faster processors.
Steve Redman, ANZ managing director of EMC, claimed: "We are releasing new, more powerful versions of Clariion and Centera when our competitors have not even introduced anything to match the current versions, so this will take us onto a different level."
Related Article:
EMC claims its ILM jigsaw is complete
Related Article: