Network-attached storage (NAS) vendor ONStor this week unveiled two new products aimed at small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) who need help with data archiving, file server consolidation and compute intensive apps like video streaming.
The new Cougar 3310 and 3510 NAS gateways are available immediately and claim to offer data centre-esque performance tucked inside a 1U form factor.
While the new products also boast power efficiency and reliability features, interested businesses will still have to dig deep to afford them; The 3310's price tag is $31,995 (18,221), while the Cougar 3510 has a list price of $54,995 (31,321).
The new storage line-up has been welcomed by analysts. "ONStor has recognised the needs of the midmarket with [its] latest round of new products. SMBs and workgroups continue to seek reliable, appropriately-priced file storage solutions that allows them to leverage existing storage investments, start small and scale big without having to rip and replace devices, and enjoy significant power and space efficiency," said Benjamin Woo, vice president of analyst IDC's enterprise storage systems division.
"In today's economy, all of those savings really add up."
The new 3000 Series products share some characteristics with their older and bigger 6000 relatives, such as the EverScale redundant modular architecture and heterogeneous storage virtualisation, according to ONStor.
"Midmarket companies have even smaller IT budgets and less resources than large enterprises to house space - and power-hungry storage devices," said Tom Gallivan, senior vice president of worldwide sales at ONStor.
"With the Cougar 3000 Series, we're enabling SMEs to control system and management costs by consolidating their file server footprint, simplifying the management of unstructured data and providing a platform for growth in two dimensions--performance or capacity. In addition, the Cougar platform delivers measureable OPEX reductions in space, power, and cooling in the client's IT environment."
