Vendors Make Noise At StorageWorld

Egan, Miss.-based IntraDyn showed its ComplianceVault, a tool designed to meet Securities and Exchange Commission requirements for e-mail retention and availability, said CEO Gary Doan. The solution includes a hard drive-based appliance with a Sony AIT-2 WORM tape drive and is available only through the channel. Pricing, including a 120-Gbyte hard drive, starts at $6,995.

At the show, StorServer, Colorado Springs, Colo., introduced the StorServer D1 Backup Appliance, a Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk-based NAS device using the Windows Storage Server 2003 OS. The D1 includes data backup, archiving and disaster-recovery software and 100 Gbytes of capacity. It is available only through the channel and starts at $3,000.

Xtore, Los Angeles, is targeting SMBs with NAS solutions also based on Windows Storage Server 2003. The XN WSS Series of NAS appliances scale from 1 Tbyte to 3 Tbytes and cost between $1,999 and $5,999. Solution providers can choose their own components and are not required to use Xtore storage enclosures or hard drives to expand capacity, said Duran Alabi, vice president of sales and marketing.

John Joseph, vice president of marketing at EqualLogic, a Nashua, N.H.-based vendor of iSCSI-based network storage solutions, said at the show that the company received a $20 million infusion of venture capital funds to help it step up its worldwide channel efforts. EqualLogic produces an iSCSI storage appliance that scales to 112 Tbytes using SATA hard drives. An SAS version is expected next year.

Meanwhile, 4Knowledge unveiled a custom training program to help solution providers and their customers better prepare for automated heterogeneous storage networks. Barry Jackson, founder of the Denver-based company, said its main focus is offering one-stop training for those customers who typically turn to multiple vendors for training once a storage network is implemented. The training is scheduled to begin this quarter and can be done on-site or in a remote lab. Solution providers can resell the training for margins equal to typical vendor training margins.