Storage giants EMC and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) went head to head this week as the two vendors chose the same day to launch new versions of products aimed at small and medium-sized firms, as well as branch offices of large enterprises.

EMC launched new Fibre Channel and iSCSI versions of its Clariion networked storage systems. The vendor said that the AX150 and AX150i offer double the performance of previous AX versions, along with improved backup and management functionality and new installation wizards.

Barry Ader, senior director of Clariion product marketing, said the products are designed to suit firms or offices with relatively small IT departments that may not employ a specific storage administrator.

"Small and medium-sized firms may not have the resources, but they still have increasingly sophisticated storage requirements and need a simple way of installing and managing storage technologies with similar functionality to larger firms," said Ader. "With AX150 and AX150i we've added a new iSCSI installation wizard and configuration tools that mean the steps to install the product have gone from over 20 on previous versions to single digits."

Meanwhile, HDS launched its latest storage system for the mid-market. The AMS1000 offers enhanced logical cache partitioning, double the performance of its predecessor, and embedded multiprotocol support for iSCSI, network-attached storage and Fibre Channel.

Jonathan Grantham, sales director for HDS in UK and Ireland, said the new functionality would allow mid-market firms to pursue the kinds of information lifecycle management strategies currently being developed by larger firms, whereby policies govern the way stored content is moved from high-cost online storage to lower-cost storage environments.

To aid this strategy, the company also unveiled a new version of its HiCommand storage management software. This has a new user interface designed to make it easier for administrators to manage HDS storage environments, said Grantham.

Mid-market firms are likely to benefit from the simultaneous launch of competing networked storage products, according to Grantham. "The fact that us and our rivals are launching on the same day underlines how hot this market is, and there's no doubt the competition will aid customers [by leading to] more innovation and better prices," he argued.