HP Jumps For Market Potential
HP Jumps For SMB Market Potential
September 21, 2006: HP sites small and medium businesses (SMBs) as an emerging key market for storage solutions.
With the release of their StorageWorks All-in-One Storage Systems, reported by IDM this week, HP is jumping on a $5.7 billion market opportunity.
“It’s a big area for us given its potential growth for the future,” says Mark Nielsen, Product Marketing Manager for HP StorageWorks. “SMBs need the storage but have shied away from it in the past.”
HP views the SMB market as any businesses hosting between two to 500 employees. It’s a market in need of storage, yet potentially hesitating due to the perceived complexities of IT solutions. A study by IDC earlier this year found that 60% of SMBs had not deployed networked storage and forecasted the market to be worth $US5.7 billion by 2010.
“The challenge SMBs have is that they don’t have the IT staff,” says Mark. “The amount of small businesses are growing, they will all need some form of IT.”
It is a market maturing, waking up to the need for effective document management and storage solutions. Often forgotten with their limited budgets, SMBs are encountering storage problems similar to their enterprise counterparts. “SMBs are moving beyond the paper scenario to automated processes and they need something to consolidate that data,” says Mark. “Their businesses are on the line if they lose that data.”