Still, observers seem to think that Quantum is heading in the right direction. "Theyre getting some really good traction with their customer base," says Enterprise Storage Group Inc. analyst Steve Kenniston. "Quantum is doing an excellent job of getting their message out... Were pretty impressed with what theyve done."
And while some observers have questioned whether a traditional tape vendor will ever get much traction in the disk market, Quantum's Kenyon says hes not worried. I think were very well-positioned from a technology standpoint, he says. Disk and tape do complement each other... Customers appreciate that they can come to us for both."
To enhance the capacity of its existing DX30 backup system, Quantum has added expansion arrays, allowing customers to gradually increase their capacity as their data requirements grow. By adding up to two optimized expansion arrays, customers can scale the DX30 from 3.4 Tbytes to 12.4 Tbytes. As customers add more arrays, it simply looks to the backup software as though the tape library is growing, according to Kenyon. Even if the arrays are not in the same spot, they are all managed together as one big tape library.
The notion of being able to scale and add additional arrays is key, says Robert Amatruda, an analyst with IDC.
Customers will have the opportunity to buy the optimized DX30 when it becomes available in June, along with additional expansion arrays that can be purchased separately. It has a starting list price of about $55,000, or $14.40 per raw gigabyte, for 3.8 Tbytes of raw capacity.