* Moves afoot by vendors to target the mid-tier market
This week, we’re keeping our eye on Computer Associates as the company moves into the midrange enterprise space with increased vigor. It looks like the old girl still has plenty of life in her.
Two weeks ago we reported from CA World that the company is adding emphasis (and programs) to help its reseller channel, which is its primary access to the middle tier corporations – those companies below the enterprise level but above the small and midsize business (SMB) market. What exactly is the midtier market? Definitions will vary of course, but essentially if you look between the largest of large businesses – say, “the global 2000” – and those shops that still measure their primary storage only in terms of 10’s of gigabytes, that’s the midtier. And it’s a pretty big segment indeed.
CA has taken two additional steps into this market during past two weeks. On July 23, CA and Iomega signed a joint marketing venture that will result in CA’s BrightStor ARCserve Backup 9.0 and its Antivirus 7.0 products being bundled into Iomega’s new NAS box.
The venture is likely to work out well for both companies. For CA, it offers a route into the midrange marketplace, and for Iomega – hitherto a major force when it came to backups of desktop machines but without much presence in the IT room – it provides instant market validation through its association with one of the leaders in enterprise backup and restore. The NAS server is based on the Windows server appliance kit (SAK), includes a tape drive, and looks to be a potential competitor for companies looking for a drop-in back-up appliance.
Last week, CA took another step. The company certified Procom’s (http://www.procom.com) line of NetFORCE 4000 series fileservers as “CA Smart,” adding that company’s highest performing devices to a slowly growing list of “smart” vendors serving midrange clients. The “smart” designation in this case indicates that those Procom NAS devices are certified to work with CA’s BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.5 package. The Procom 4000 series addresses a higher point within the midrange segment, and scales accordingly in terms of storage capacity and features.
Both Iomega and Procom have their own active channel partners serving midrange IT shops, a fact that is unlikely to have been lost on CA’s management.
CA’s increasing interest in the midrange and in further enabling its channel partners bodes well not just for those of you running midsized operations in the U.S.; it has important implications for readers in the international community as well. Hard to believe as it may be, many companies outside North America and Western Europe have a need for storage services that is as great as anywhere else. But these markets are smaller, and are serviced by international distributors and resellers rather than by the large software companies’ direct sales forces.
Approaching these markets via resellers is the most economical model for the vendors, and works in the users’ favor as well as the local reps can provide services tuned to local support, technology and regulatory needs. There is no reason why these users shouldn’t be able to make use of these packages or others like them, however. International users who want to take advantage of either of these bundled offerings should begin discussions with their local providers as soon as possible.
CA, Iomega and Procom aren’t the only ones looking to provide value by shipping bundled offerings, of course.
Last week STORServer (http://www.storserver.com) and Spectra Logic (http://www.spectralogic.com) joined in an OEM deal to add SpectraLogic’s tape libraries to the STORServer S Series of back-up appliances. STORServer, in Colorado Springs, builds a drop-in appliance that bundles services to enhance various pieces of important functionality within IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). STORServer has thus far focused on TSM sites, but may be breaking out of this (admittedly enormous) niche soon.
