EMC Sets Sights on SMB Storage

February 7, 2006: EMC has further expanded its reach into the small to medium business (SMB) market with the release of its new Insignia line of hardware and software storage solutions.

With one storage array and five software products, the company says that Isignia is aimed at SMBs that need powerful solutions that are easy to use.

The hardware portion of the new line is the CLARiiON AX100 storage disk array. Making use of inexpensive Serial ATA (SATA) drives, it features a capacity of 750Gb expandable to 6Tb and supports Windows, Linux, Solaris and NetWare.

Software wise, EMC’s Insignia includes a suite of products to deal with information and resource management, backup, replication and collaboration. These include Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition, Retrospect, RepliStor SMB Edition, VisualSRM SMB Edition and eRoom SMB Edition.

"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 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.” said Joe Tucci, Chairman, President, and CEO of EMC. “Insignia brings EMC expertise in these areas to a new and adjacent market at appropriate price points. These products enable SMBs to focus on growing their businesses rather than expending unnecessary effort to store, manage, protect, and share their information."

Insignia is available now with prices starting at:
- CLARiiON AX100 Storage Array $8,289
- Storage Administrator for Exchange SMB Edition $3,006
- EMC Retrospect $601
- RepliStor SMB Edition $1,500
- VisualSRM SMB Edition $1,500
- eRoom SMB Edition $1,500 for a 10 user license

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