HP's strength in both the storage market and in the market for servers, to which much of its storage is connected or networked, serves it well in the small and midsize NAS market, with its solution providers proposing more revenue in deals for NAS than did partners of its competitors.
However, HP did lag behind competitors such as IBM, NetApp, EMC and even Dell in terms of the average value of those deals.
According to the IPED, HP solution providers proposed deals that totaled 33 percent of the total SMB NAS market in the first half of 2008, with average deals worth $15,500. Server arch-rival Dell was second in terms of the value of the deals proposed but slightly ahead of HP in terms of average value per deal.
