MicroNet Storage Priced For Mid-Market

Most businesses have an insatiable need for more storage space to retain the endless sprawl of data. Fortunately, the plummeting cost of disk space is bringing more and more storage options to palatable price points for smaller businesses."How much depends on the company, but there's always a need for more storage," says MicroNet Technology director of product development, Gary Goodman.

Goodman's 50-person firm is counting on that unslakeable demand as they expand their VAR relationship with Ingram Micro. The reseller channel builds on the company's relationship with Buy.com and complements its direct online sales channel.

The latest storage release from MicroNet is the Genesis V RAID rackmount system. With a starting price point of $3,529, the system can scale up with 16TB with prices maxing out in the neighborhood of $13,000-$14,000 depending upon the specific configuration according to Goodman.

That represents a broad range of costs and storage volume that may be daunting to business owners. MicroNet is positioning the Genesis V product line as and simple and easy-to-use but without scrimping on the features -- terms like enterprise-class.

Goodman acknowledges that business owners need to assess their needs and then find the products that fit them. "If you look around most offices, you'll see FireWire and USB drive. Sometimes you'll see 4-bay RAID boxes with RAID 5, but it's not networked. And then there are tape backup systems. It's a patchwork. It's amazing how much data businesses have lying around on 1TB drives. That's scares people and it should. That's a lot of data and without a backup plan, you could lose it."

Though price is top-of-mind for any business owners (particularly these days), Goodman notes that many small and midmarket companies also struggle with understanding storage, saying, "Even when business back up their data, if they don't understand RAID, they're paying for 2 drives and they still need to copy or mirror the data." This need to educate customers about storage is part of the reason to embrace a reseller network that allows for more personalized service.

Although the cost of physical storage is dropping, cloud computing offers another possible option for backup and storage services. But Goodman dismisses this option, saying, "I don't see cloud computing taking over. Somewhere your data's being stored on a disk. As a backup device, cloud is an option to keeping data on tape, but I would want to know where my data is. I think it's going to take a long time for people to warm up the idea [of using exclusively cloud-based storage]."

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