EMC: Low-Cost Clariion

The company was able to bring down the price of this entry-level product by replacing the array's dual controller with a single-controller option, said Jay Krone, director of Clariion marketing at EMC, based here.

The new single-controller version of the Clariion CX200 supports up to 15 hard drives and has a native capacity of up to 2.2 Tbytes, Krone said.

The single-controller CX200 is EMC's latest in a series of moves aimed at bringing its products to the small- and midsize-business SAN space, Krone said. In addition to direct sales to solution providers, the company currently has three distributors,Arrow Electronics, Avnet Hall-Mark and Bell Microproducts,carrying the CX family, he said.

"These distributors touch smaller resellers," he said. "We are looking to broaden distribution. I think there will be a few new [solution providers] who will sign by end-of-year."

Mark Teeter, CTO of Advanced Systems Group, a Denver-based solution provider, said that it is hard to see where the new low-cost arrays fit in the channel.

Instead, said Teeter, they will be more suited to Dell Computer, which is EMC's biggest reseller, and for over-the-Web sales to IT shops that do their own installation.

"For us to quote a $10,000 array, we have to be doing other things with the customer at the same time," he said. "The cost of making the deal is too high,meet with the customer, go back to the office, make the quote, have another meeting with the customer."

For EMC, the low-priced array is more of a marketing tactic, Teeter said. "Yeah, you can buy it for $10,000," he said. "But then you add an additional controller, more software, and pretty soon you're at $40,000."

Such tactics are EMC's specialty, said Teeter. "At the Veritas Vision conference last month, EMC brought in a DMX array but didn't plug it in," he said. "Instead, they gave a Mini Cooper to one of the attendees at the end of the show. The best marketing promotion I saw. Everyone else had software and hardware running. EMC had that Mini, and got the most qualified leads of all."

However, Joe Cunningham, general manager of Computer Professionals International, an Albany, N.Y.-based small- and midsize-business solution provider that recently re-engaged with EMC, said he is glad to see EMC push into this space.

"In the small and midsize markets, there is still a slow adoption rate for SANs," Cunningham said. "Any attempt by a manufacturer to bring their products down to this space helps."