More High-End Storage, Fewer BucksMore High-End Storage, Fewer Bucks

The cost of network-attached storage keeps dropping, and customers are getting more for their money.

FIA Storage Systems Group's POPnetserver 2000, for example, offers 40 Gbytes of capacity for $795. This fall, the vendor will introduce the POPnetserver 4000, which can store up to 320 Gbytes of data; prices are expected to start at around $1,495.

But for many businesses, price is just one factor in deciding what type of storage product to buy. Sean Porcher, director of operations at Pacific Coast Jiffy Lube Inc. in Arroyo Grande, Calif., has been using the POPnetserver 2000 for more than a month and says it's been so reliable that he hasn't needed to use its high-end capabilities. It can scale up to 120 Gbytes, boot from any one of three drives, and distribute data across several drives to provide redundancy.

Another benefit, Porcher says, is that the system makes every workstation perform better because it stores data that used to be shared among the workstations. "We don't have a network administrator, so I was worried about hooking it up," he says. "That turned out to be the cool thing. I found an available port on a hub, and I had it up and running in five minutes."

FIA officials say the POPnetserver 4000 will offer multiple levels of redundancy. It comes with four hot-swappable drives and fits in a rack-mountable enclosure that's little more than an inch high. The product lets users organize data on the disks dynamically and makes data more easily available on other drives when one fails.

"I don't think anyone can touch their features at their price points," says Hurwitz Group analyst Richard Ptak. FIA's biggest challenge may be to establish its brand while competing against better-known storage vendors such as EMC and Network Appliance at the high end and Procom Technology and Quantum at the low end, Ptak says.

Gene Lu, FIA's president and CEO, says the company, a subsidiary of Wearnes Technology Corp. in Singapore, has plenty of cash--$60 million--to develop its business.