HP and QLogic Aim Low

ORLANDO, Fla. -- You cant say Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC) are overestimating the technical expertise of SMBs -- or underestimating the threat of IP SANs to that market segment.

HP and QLogic have joined with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) to come up with an entry-level system they say can be set up in less than an hour with fewer than 25 mouse clicks -- a SAN for Technical Idiots, as it were. The SAN ships in one box and includes an HP disk array, two QLogic HBAs, and an eight-port switch.

HP calls it the StorageWorks MSA 1000 Small Business SAN kit, with pricing starting at under $10,000. It was unveiled today at Storage Networking World and will be available November 1.

Storage vendors have loudly courted the SMB (small to medium-sized business) market for around a year now, but the biggest challenge has been that SMBs are often ill-prepared to run a SAN. Kyle Fitze, HP’s director of SAN marketing, says SMBs know the whys of SANs a lot more than the hows.

“Do they not understand the benefits of SANs?” Fitze says. “No, it’s the perceived cost and complexity that stops them from implementing them.”One analyst says the HP and QLogic partnership shows SAN vendors are worried about iSCSI encroaching on the low end.

“This is a defensive posture from Fibre Channel vendors,” says Arun Taneja of the Taneja Group. “They’re scared silly of iSCSI. If they don’t do this now, they’ll lose to iSCSI. The biggest problem with Fibre Channel SANs for SMBs is that the out-of-box experience is horrible.”

What’s Microsoft’s role here? Always looking for new ways to crack the storage market, Microsoft is trying to make Windows 2003 work better with storage equipment (see QLogic Does Windows).

Microsoft's idea is to simplify storage management by integrating it into the operating system. Windows 2003 allows administrators to configure storage devices from inside Windows instead of through storage management applications.

QLogic has been one of the most active partners in Microsoft’s Simple SAN initiative, which won’t be officially launched until next year. The MSA 1000 Small Business SAN Kit includes QLogic's new SANbox 3050 entry level switch and SANsurfer Express software that allows for quick installation of HBAs, switches, and arrays.“We want to make Windows the best platform for storage,” says Rahul Auradkar, Microsoft’s director of the Windows server division.

So who is the target customer for the HP MSA 1000 SMB SAN? At today’s press conference, HP trotted out Mike Magaldi, teacher and technology director of St. Mary’s and All Angels School in Laguna Beach, Calif. Magaldi gave a presentation about how the 850-student elementary school uses the SAN to solve the dire problem of storing digital photos.

“I will bet not many people have seen a presentation like that from a customer like that at a conference like this,” QLogic marketing director Frank Berry says.

Clearly, QLogic, HP, and Microsoft are betting on seeing more customers like that in places like this.

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch0