While HP has the top score on the IPED Channel Affinity Index for the SMB NAS category, the vendor's solution providers are not resting on their laurels. Instead, the company is expected to increase its share of the value of small and midsize business NAS channel sales in the second half of 2008 to 37.8 percent, based on solution providers' expectations of planned customer deals.
HP has been a really strong partner in the small and midsize business market, said Dhruv Gulati, executive vice president of Lilien Systems, a Larkspur, Calif.-based solution provider and NAS partner of both HP and NetApp.
The fact that HP bases the majority of its NAS business on appliances built using a Windows operating system on top of its ProLiant servers is a huge plus for the vendor, Gulati said. "HP products are really aimed for the SMB space because they are built on Windows," he said.
HP also has other NAS products for small and midsize businesses, but the ProLiant-based products are the most suitable, Gulati said.
"I best like how HP has good products for delivery to the SMB," he said. "HP has a NAS head for its EVA arrays, but it's a bit clunky. But if customers need both SAN and NAS, it's a good solution."
