HP aims to lead mid-end storage market

Information technology giant Hewlett-Packard announced Tuesday a series of new mid-range storage systems in a bid to increase its presence in the growing storage market for small- and medium-sized enterprises in Korea.

The new products include the HP MSA Storage ― equipped with solid state drive caching solutions which the firm claims allow enterprises to boost the speed of data processing ― and a hybrid flash array called HP StorageVirtual 4335 hybrid.

A hybrid flash array is an SSD that contains a mix of flash memory drives and hard disk drives.

The traditional hard disk drives are rapidly giving ground to SSDs, a relatively new storage technology boasting high read and write speeds, in the storage market.

The HP MSA Storage is aimed at providing storage solutions for customers who want cheaper but faster storage management systems, according to HP.

“Information technology infrastructure needs to be agile and flexible enough to allow firms to operate on an on-demand basis,” said Philip Davis, vice president at the storage division of HP’s Enterprise Group, emphasizing the new products would enable its enterprise customers to improve business performance and make the most of their resources.

HP’s scalable data backup system, called the StoreOnce Backup2900, was also introduced at the media briefing.

The company said the data backup appliance boasts a backup capacity of up to 48 terabytes, two times larger than those of the firm’s rivals, and 30 percent better performance than existing products.

HP, whose market share in the Korean storage market stands at around 10 percent, is currently trying to catch up with the leaders EMC and Hitachi, which both boast more than a 30 percent market share.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)