Iomega bets on NAS

Iomega is betting on NAS and aims to become number three
player in the market, in the next couple of years. The company, which introduced
its NAS appliance only three months back in India, is projecting a big growth
for the product based on the country's potential and opportunities available
here. “The response is very good for NAS and it is a pipeline business.
Presently, many customers have shown interest for our product, which can be
converted into business (sales) soon,” said DR Baskaran, Business Develop-ment
Manager (India and Middle East), Iomega Pacific Pte Ltd.

Iomega got into NAS business
about four years ago in the worldwide market and presently enjoying number three
(according Gartner report), said Thomas Lok, Sales and Marketing Head, Asia
Pacific, Iomega Corporation. “Though, we have a consider-able presence in
India and enjoy a good market share here, Iomega did not bring NAS into India as
it wanted to strengthen the service set-up first, before offering the products.
Now, we have trai-ned and appointed our distributor Neoteric Infomatique, as
service partner too.” The company has also recently appointed a customer
support manager in India.

Iomega is shipping over 5,000
NAS units per quarter for the worldwide market, while 4,000 patented REV drives
(revolutionary removable hard disc drive) per week. Both constitute the value
business (B2B) for the company. “India is a different market. We can see three
types of competition here in NAS-the MNC brands, national players and the
regional assemblers (mostly imported and sold as white boxes). Iomega will be
competing only with the MNC brands and national players here and our products
are very unique in the market. Iomega NAS appliance comes with a built-in REV
drive, only product to offer store, backup and archive functions in a single
unit. We also provide Windows Storage Server (WSS) software and e-trust
anti-virus software for free-of-cost,” said Baskaran.

Overall, Iomega is focusing
more on B2B business to achieve growth and profitability. “It is a conscious
decision from the company to focus more on value business. Currently, B2B
contributes only 40 percent in the total turnover, while remaining 60 percent
comes from B2C solutions,” said Lok. But, in India, the B2B business is even
more less at 25 percent only. “The value business is growing fast here and
soon, we would match the worldwide ratio of 40:60,” pointed out Baskaran. 

The company is focusing more on SMB market and
BFSI, media, educational institutions and government, among others, are the
potential customers. Ingram Micro is the other national distributor for Iomega.                                             
                             

S
Gopikrishna Chennai, Feb 8