EMC Intros New Mid-Market Product

EMC today introduced a second member of its Clariion CX family, its latest bid to capture business
in data storage’s fastest growing segment — the middle market.

The CX400 aims to offer high-bandwidth performance while being sensitive to customer price concerns. The product starts at $62,000 for 180 gigabytes of raw capacity and is sold directly and through EMC partner Dell Computer.

The announcement comes less than a week after the Hopkinton, Mass., company warned
about lagging sales and cut 7 percent of its workforce, or about 1,350 employees, to trim expenses.

Justin Bartinoski, an EMC spokesman, said the middle market, though difficult to define, represents an area of opportunity even during tough economic times.

“(The middle market) is composed of small-to-medium sized businesses including government, education institutions as well as Fortune 1000 companies who deploy
mid-range storage systems in departmental locations or in their data center for less critical applications,” Bartinoski told boston.internet.com.

It includes companies like cable operator Cox Communications, an EMC customer that voiced support for the price/performance balance promised by the CX400 system.

The mid-market and price push is a departure from the EMC strategy of the 1990s, where the focus was on large customers and impact on a customers’ budget wasn’t part of the sales pitch.

But a languishing economy, paired with stepped-up competition from Hewlett-Packard (which significantly upgraded its mid-market line with the acquisition of Compaq), IBM and Sun Microsystems has changed that.

The CX400 takes aim at Big Blue, which in the last year has also marshaled its
resources around mid-market customers as enterprise buyers, such as banks, airlines, and retail chains have delayed orders.

Two months ago, EMC unveiled the first member of the product group, CX600. While he wouldn’t say explicitly, Bartinoski, when asked if EMC is working on
additional offerings said, “stay tuned.”