Intel is making serious moves in the storage market these days.
The chip giant is teaming with enterprise storage leader EMC
to offer systems aimed at the small- to medium-sized business
(SMB) market.
Last month at its Intel Developer’s Forum, Intel unveiled an
entry level storage system aimed at the home office and low end of the SMB
market.
The latest offering is a networked storage system based on EMC’s Clariion
AX150 that will be sold to Intel resellers and
distributors worldwide.
Under this OEM
will be able to sell the systems under their own private brands and labels.
Intel said it has more than 160,000 distributors and resellers worldwide.
The Intel SSR212PP Storage System is expected to be available beginning in
May. The system features up to 12 serial ATA II (SATA II) disk drives in a
2U rack mountable enclosure and can support a maximum capacity of six
terabytes in a single array.
While pricing is up to the dealer, Intel
officials said a base configuration should cost fewer than $6,000.
The storage system can be configured for either iSCSI or Fibre Channel
for flexible direct attached storage (DAS) or storage area network (SAN)
connectivity. A choice of single- or dual-controller configurations will be
available along with redundant power and cooling functionality.
Despite the power of the Intel brand and the EMC brand for storage, the
companies said their strategy is to emphasize the local brand name of the
reseller.
“Some people call these white boxes,” Hans Geyer, vice president and general manager of
Intel’s storage group, told internetnews.com.
“What’s important is
that they be branded by the reseller because they have the customer
relationship and want to demonstrate they can provide a complete solution.”
While available in the U.S., Intel and EMC said they will emphasize the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, Eastern Europe and other emerging markets where
Intel also has an established distributor network.
“More than 30 percent
of our channel revenue comes from those markets outside the U.S.,” said
Geyer.
EMC is looking to expand the reach of its storage
technology to growing companies that may well migrate to higher-end EMC
systems over time.
“The SMB market is growing at two-and-a-half times the
enterprise space. We see a large and growing opportunity,” said Mitch Breen,
senior VP of global channels at EMC.
Intel said it will look to EMC to help it define future silicon requirements
for future storage systems. Conversely, Intel will give EMC feedback from
its channel partners on what they are looking for in future storage systems.
“We think it’s an ideal marriage,” said Geyer. “You have technology from EMC
that’s been tested in enterprise environments combined with Intel training
and support the channel is used to.”
