Leader: Storage - truly a small business issue

Dell and EMC yesterday decided to turn their combined attention to SMEs. But by SMEs, what do they mean?

If these two giants are developing their successful alliance by selling storage area network (SAN) infrastructure to companies for at least $5,000 a pop - which they are - we can assume those small companies aren't so small they're IT laggards. They probably have an IT department, for one thing, and several hundred if not a thousand employees.

Which is all great, unless you fall into that really small bracket - maybe in a company with a handful of staff and no dedicated IT personnel.

Earlier this week silicon.com caught up with the boss of another of the most important companies in this sector, Gary Bloom of storage software management outfit Veritas. His company has done pretty well out of high-end, enterprise storage needs but recognises the SME market is problematic.

For one thing, smaller companies generally aren't as fastidious about back-up. And have they ever tried a dry run for restoring data? Trust us, there are plenty of large, listed companies that haven't.

The trouble is that in these days of increased regulatory compliance, there must be best practice across the extended enterprise, and that's an issue for all partners and suppliers, however small.

But there is some good news here. Whether using high-end back-up software, hosted environments or lower end drives and software, those that organise themselves well can get a competitive advantage.

That's as much about the one-man band with an Iomega disk drive and replicated data at relatives' houses as much as the £10m IT department.

Don't think storage isn't an SME issue.