By K R Nambiar
After its acquisition by EMC last year, Iomega is planning an aggressive comeback in the Indian market with storage offerings spanning the consumer and commercial space.
“Our new positioning in the market complements EMC’s storage offerings. While EMC products start from Rs 3 lakh, Iomega will straddle the entire spectrum below that starting from external storage drives to high-end NAS devices,” explained D R Baskaran, National Manager, Iomega India.
Although Iomega has been shipping an entire range of portable, external and network drives for the past few years, it failed to make a major impression in the market. But with EMC’s backing Iomega believes it is a winner. In its reinvented avatar, Iomega will fully utilize EMC’s technology, customer and channel strengths. “We are looking at leveraging EMC’s channels which include the biggest systems integrators. We believe these integrators will align with us to cater to their requirements for entry-level NAS, and in many cases even for the external drive requirements of their customers,” added Baskaran.
On the technology front, Iomega is using some of EMC’s software along with its products. Portable hard drives from Iomega now come with free downloadable software bundles that integrate EMC Retrospect Express backup and recovery software with the Mozy online backup service. Its ix2 range of NAS devices features the EMC Lifeline storage manager.
“By bundling EMC software freely, many SMB and SOHO customers will now see a big advantage in buying our products because the common technology platform will allow them to easily upgrade from Iomega to EMC as and when their needs grow,” explained Baskaran.
Iomega is also planning an aggressive retail thrust for the fast-growing portable storage market.
Iomega’s range of products is distributed by Ingram Micro and Neoteric. |