By: msillanp

msillanp — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:39:56 +0000

EMC has been playing in this SMB for a little over a year now with the EMC Insignia line. Moving to the consumer desktop isn’t as much of a stretch. Many SMB are use to making decisions through online reviews and walking down to their local “BuyMore” and talking to a “green shirt” to find which row to pickup an accounting package. The retail channel from a vendor perspective is very much the same and this new channel is something I’m sure that EMC was looking into. Will this mean that people will expect the members of the “Nerd Heard” will be able to install enterprise hardware of software? I think not, though it’s interesting to think they get paid $160 to install a plasma TV. The other channel it brings is straight to the hardware manufacture. Dell, HP, and Toshiba all use Iomega drives in their desktops and laptops. This channel will also bring new opportunities to sell NAS through those relationships. Today EMC really only has that relationship with Dell. From a technology perspective this also adds capacity to develop smaller drive units and the relationships to manufacture them. I can envision “cache drives” installed on desktop machines with NAS mirroring done at the BIOS. Finally, it also means that EMC will probably be looking for more consumer products in the future. One of the next obvious choices is to protect that data from viruses. It’s not hard to think that either McAfee or Symantec will be talked about in the future. Sorry for all the “Chuck” references but I’m jonesing for a new episode and it makes a good generic name for a electronics retailer.

Comments on: EMC Wants To Be Under Your Desk

By: msillanp