Network Appliance has launched a storage appliance for small businesses with less than 50 servers and a budget of under $20,000 to spend on storage products and services – but it won’t be available in Ireland until the autumn.
StoreVault S500 has a starting price of $5,000 and includes NAS (network-attached storage) and iSCSI connectivity in a single box. There are also plans to add Fibre Channel connectivity after the summer.
The product, which is aimed at companies that need anything from 500Gb to 3Tbs of data storage, is Network Appliance’s first big attack on the SME sector. The existing FAS200 products, which are priced at around €8,000-9,000, are mainly targeted at medium sized businesses or branch offices for larger companies.
Announcing the product, Dan Warmenhoven, CEO of Network Appliance claimed other vendors were pushing customers “to purchase multiple products to do SAN and NAS…The StoreVault all-in-one network storage system will serve the smaller customer’s growing environment and simplify their data management, without forcing difficult and expensive upfront technology decisions”.
Gordon Nother, head of new business development at Appliance Technology, the Irish partner for Network Appliance, said the announcement was welcome. “We see it as an important part of the business. It’s been a long time coming and we’re sorry it isn’t hitting the market sooner.”
In the US, Network Appliance has launched a StoreVault division to focus on the small business market with its own engineering, support, sales, marketing, systems and operations groups. Other small business products will be introduced through the division over time.
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