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    HPE Adds Flash Punch to SMB Storage Arrays

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    2016 Data Storage Trends: DevOps, Flash and Hybrid Cloud

    As part of a broad effort to accelerate the adoption of Flash storage by small-to-medium sized businesses (SMB), Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) today unveiled an entry-level storage array that includes a tier of 800GB of solid-state drives (SSDs) at price points starting just under $10,000.

    In addition, HPE unveiled a separate offering that lowers the price point of the HPE StoreVirtual family of storage arrays to just over $6,000.

    In both cases, Brad Parks, director of go-to-market strategy and enablement for HPE Storage, says HPE is looking to gain share in a segment of the market that is just now starting to transform how it manages storage. With over a half a million units of the MSA array sold primarily to SMB customers, Parks says HPE is now moving to make Flash storage available to SMB customers at a price that is equivalent to traditional magnetic storage in the form of an MSA 2042 array.

    At the same time, the HPE StoreVirtual 3200 hybrid storage array provides an alternative to SMB customers that includes a small amount of Flash memory to accelerate I/O performance, while providing the same software-defined storage operating system that HPE employs throughout the rest of the its enterprise-class family of StoreVirtual arrays.

    In effect, HPE is now giving SMB customers the option of staying with the MSA series of arrays that HPE has primarily sold in this segment for years, or moving to the HPE StoreVirtual platform that is designed to scale higher as an SMB organization grows into an enterprise-class organization.

    “Both these offerings give SMB customers access to emerging technologies on platforms that are proven,” says Parks.

    Regardless of the how they make the transition, it’s clear that the amount of data an organization consumes, or for that matter even the amount of I/O performance it requires, often now has little to do with the actual size of an organization anymore. The only thing that is remaining the same is the level of price sensitivity the average SMB organization has in terms of its ability to acquire a modern storage system that meets its particular requirements. The good news is that it’s becoming increasingly apparent that there have never been more options for achieving that goal.

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    Mike Vizard
    Mike Vizard
    Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.

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