What size is that business that I sell to? I do hope they're buying my stuff...

Yesterday I finally received the Press Release that broke me.I've been laughing at the storage market for years over their opinion of the size of budget an SMB has, but this one just did me in."...the first IP product of its kind geared towards the S in the SMB. With the availability of the product XXXX has extended its reach to the entry-level and has broadened its product line from entry level to the enterprise. In addition it provides customers with enterprise- class functionality at a starting MSRP of less than $20,000." I have removed the company name because it is not fair to laugh at them alone, the entire market is whack-jobs when it comes to the definition of "small business".

Now I don't know about you, but I do not know a single Small Business that will pay $20K for a purpose-built storage appliance. I do know a few toward the high end of medium that will, and a ton of Fortune 1K's.

So I forwarded the press release to my 'gang' of Storage people - resolute Steve Hill, the imperterbable Howard Marks, and Steven "I do switching but storage is still cool" Schuchart, and asked what they thought.

While we're not 100% in agreement (Master Schuchart has spent too much time with high-end core switching vendors, methinks), Howard has a chart that he uses that indexes knowledge workers, IT professionals, and comes up with a classification. I looked at his chart and thought "works for me".

Frankly, anything that stops trying to claim small businesses have IT budgets in the $100K range works for me. We all know better, so why is it the storage PR folks don't seem to get it? Small businesses buy the stuff that's core to their business at a premium, they buy IT stuff from whomever is cheapest. Some might go for "just above cheapest", but they certainly don't set aside $20K for a single piece of equipment.I've had this conversation over and over with you, the readers, and you're all living it. Confusion on what is actually aimed at you because these geniuses want to classify everything into "Enterprise" and "Small Business", where "Enterprise" is Fortune 1K and "small business" is everything else.

Stop The Madness!

If a company has less than 400 employees, and is not a business that is based on IT (like an ISP), then I guarantee they're not shelling out $20K for a single piece of equipment, and if they are I wouldn't invest in them.

Let's put storage onto the same track as wireless hubs. There's SOHO, Small Business, SME, Enterprise, and Fortune 1000. Is it all that difficult? Sure, your "projected market" shrinks, but that's called reality.

I now step down from my soapbox, expecting to see little change.Until next time,Don.