Compellent Eyes Enterprise Storage Market

On Tuesday Compellent Technologies plans to extend its reach from its SMB base into the enterprise market with the release of enhancements to its storage management software (Storage Center 5.4) that will feature server virtualization integration, as well as a new controller platform that supports everything from FCoE to 10Gb iSCSI and from 6Gb/s SAS drives to a 2.5-inch 24-bay enclosure. Also new is Live Volume, software which acts as a storage hypervisor and addresses a number of data mobility issues, including moving storage for application changes, maintenance, planned outages, load balancing and disaster avoidance.

The company says this is the first in a series of announcements that will target the scale-up and scale-out storage needs driven by the shift to cloud computing and virtualization. Compellent says its latest releases will take its scalability, performance and capability to a new level for the enterprise and cloud environments.

Last month Tom Trainer took an early look at Compellent's enterprise aspirations. "In my opinion, Compellent is now there, taking on the enterprise challenge and firmly planted in the enterprise mix."

As part of this new direction, Live Volume can virtualize multiple Compellent systems, and the updated Storage Center will enable users to see all Compellent systems through a single pane of glass. There's also a new VMware plug-in for vCenter that can reduce workloads from hours to minutes, says the company.

Compellent is focused on the virtualization market with features that make managing storage simpler, says IDC analyst Noemi Greyzdorf. This is a major release and virtual volumes is the key feature in this release, she says. "It enables Compellent systems to scale much bigger then before and allows them to deliver better performance. It increases addressable market not only from the perspective that they have innovative functionality that can deliver on the original promise of efficient and effective storage but also on the idea of fluid data, the message they are trying to relay, which is placing data on the right media at the right time."The focus of the new features and functionality supports that message, positioning the system to be viewed by some as more enterprise class then before, she adds. "I think Compellent is on the right track to make the platform be viewed more as a scalable enterprise platform then just a mid-market play."

However, going after the enterprise market with the distribution channel - resellers and system integrators - will be a challenge, says Greyzdorf. Large organizations often prefer to have a direct relationship with the vendor - just think IBM, HP and Oracle - which can cause problems. "Compellent is a 100 percent channel company, so finding a way to stay loyal to the channel while delivering the 'hand holding' many enterprise customers demand will be key."