NetApp scales storage range for mid-size firms

Network Appliance (NetApp) is setting its sights on the mid-market by scaling down its enterprise range with the NetApp FAS2000 product line.
An independent survey commissioned by NetApp, revealed more than half of European IT managers in the mid-market saw a rise of over 20 per cent in storage capacity requirements in the past year.
The FAS2020 and FAS2050, along with new deployment and audit services, are designed to help mid-size firms with the demand of backup, disaster recovery and server consolidation ­ with the benefit of a smaller price tag, according to the vendor.
John Rollason, solution marketing manager EMEA at NetApp, said: “The FAS2000 is a new platform
that allows NetApp to address the
mid-market, by scaling our product to a smaller market.”
Pete Rawden, UK channel sales director at NetApp, said: “NetApp gave its partners a three-month headstart with the FAS2020 and FAS2050 before releasing them to end users. This was to educate partners and to allow them to build on the business when prepared.
“The FAS2000 is a 100 per cent virtualised storage platform and no other vendor offers this solution in the market,” Rollason claimed.
Steve Cowlin, divisional director at distributor DNS Arrow, said: “Our partners have been looking for storage solutions that simplify data management, including backup and recovery, for their mid-size enterprise customers. The FAS2000 offers this at a price their mid-market customers can meet.”
Analyst firm IDC has forecast that the mid-size enterprise external disk storage market is growing almost twice as fast as the overall market.
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