By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
July 8, 2010

Information infrastructure provider EMC has recently filled its entire spectrum of storage offerings after its acquisition of Iomega, providing the traditionally enterprise-focused firm with a whole suite of products targeted at the SMB and consumer markets.

Acquired by EMC in 2008, Iomega will open new doors for the company in terms of tapping a new market, which has been unchartered territory for EMC until recently.

Easily one of the top competitors in the US and UK for personal and SMB storage products, EMC said Iomega has been one of the fastest growing segments of EMC to date, owing to its mass-appeal offerings of personal storage and NAS (network-attached storage) systems.

With virtually no presence in Asia upon its acquisition, Iomega is expanding its territory by bringing to market a unique suite of products that will address a market normally dominated by Seagate and Western Digital products.

The factor that differentiates Iomega from competitors, according to Rajiv Mukul, the company’s vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan, is its robust host of value-added services that enhance the product line beyond the normal capacity and security features.

This includes software offerings originating from companies acquired by EMC over the years: MozyHome, an online backup utility; EMC Retrospect Express, a backup utility software; an encryption software provided by RSA, the security division of EMC; and vClone, a desktop cloning tool from VMWare, among others.

Iomega’s crusade to expand its business comes at a time when the demand for backup is heightened by the fact that users are slowly realizing the need to secure their files. “80% of PC users do not do backup,” Mukul shared. “Data are getting lost by the minute, and people are realizing the need to do backup.”

This, obviously, bodes well for the storage vendor, which insists that storage today has become more personal than before. “The PC is not the best place to keep data anymore. PCs are used for computing, not for storing data, so it will be much safer if you keep your data outside the PC,” Mukul suggested.

Iomega calls this phenomenon the shift from PC (personal computing) to PS (personal storage). “Increasing broadband penetration, popularity of digicams, PC entertainment, and social media are driving the need for these personal storage devices,” Mukul remarked.

The same phenomenon applies to the SMB market, which is seeing an increased adoption of NAS due to its simplicity. “Most SMBs do not have dedicated IT staff, so our products appeal to them because they are simple enough to use,” Mukul added.

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