Iomega Enters NAS Space, Adds Partner Program

Iomega

At the same time, the company also unveiled a program to bring more solution providers into its client base.

Iomega, known for its Jaz and Zip drives, introduced four NAS products aimed at the small- and midsize-business market where the typical customer adds general purpose servers when storage needs expand, said Askay Gupta, product general manager at the company, based here.

The A300u includes three 40-Gbyte hard drives, a Celeron 900MHz processor, 128 Mbytes of RAM, a single 10/100 Ethernet connection and RAID 0, 1 and 5 capability. List price is $1,099.

The company also introduced three models of its P400u series, with capacities of 160 Gbytes, 320 Gbytes and 480 Gbytes. They offer dual 10/100 Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, up to 512 Mbytes of RAM, a Celeron 900MHz or Pentium III 1GHz processor and RAID 0, 1, 5 and 5++hot spare capabilities. Prices range from $1,999 to $3,999.

The four new NAS units come in 1U rack-mount enclosures and include a Unix-based operating system. Three models using Microsoft's Windows operating system are expected to be available in the next 60 days, Askay said.

As a prelude to the NAS product launch, Iomega restructured internally to put more resources in supporting value-added products rather than the desktop-oriented products of the past, said Kerry Brock, director of business-to-business sales and business development at the company.

As part of the restructuring, Iomega has recently put in place six regional sales managers in the United States to work with the channel, Brock said. The company also hired a new representative firm with 50 people to support VARs and has developed a VAR telesales unit, he said.

Also new is ioLink, a program aimed at helping Iomega's solution providers profitably sell NAS products, Brock said.

Included in the program are new sales and technical training programs, a dedicated Web site with all needed sales tools, a sophisticated sales lead program, joint marketing and incentives including rebates based on sales commitments and $50 to $150 spiffs for sales, he said.