NetApp unveils storage systems

Network Appliance, a storage systems provider, on Monday unveiled two new mid-range storage systems (part of the FAS series) to address three significant customer pain points. These are high storage aquisition costs, low storage resource utilisation and increasing storage managements costs.

"We designed our new FAS systems to provide the best value of any mid-range storage system in the industry," said Patrick Rogers, vice president, marketing. The FAS series comes in the mid-level storage segment, which amounts to 50-55 per cent of the storage market.

The FAS 3000 series delivers a higher price performance and supports more users per system than the previous generation FAS storage systems for greater storage consolidation capability.

"The new NetAPP FAS 3000 series will give customers the best options to architect a highly available solution that simplifies the data management of their primary business applications," said George Thomas, country manager, NetApp India.

NetApp registered a revenue growth of 37 per cent in fiscal year 2005 with $1.6 billion compared to $1.17 billion in 2004. The total external storage market is worth $15 billion and the mid-level amounts to about $8 billion.

The overall storage need is growing 45 per cent annually with the mid-range storage market growing faster by 50-55 per cent.