When it comes to storing their data, midsize companies want it all: specially designed solutions at affordable prices, centralized management, scalability, and well-trained, support-intensive solution providers to design, implement and maintain this critical part of their business.

The good news is the recent slew of storage products from EMC, Hewlett- Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, Quantum and others designed to meet these requirements. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of U.S. companies with between 99 and 1,000 employees, many of which are growing rapidly and therefore require more storage and storage services. Dissatisfied with watered-down versions of enterprise offerings or soupedup small-business systems, midsize customers are excellent prospects for market-specific solutions.

"What we hear from midsize companies is, 'We don't want downsized enterprise data centers,'" says Frank Rauch, vice president in HP's Solution Partners Organization. "The Global 500,000 is a momentum play for us and a momentum play for our partners."

A Broad Target
Midsize organizations are using the gamut of technologies -- including external disk arrays, network-attached storage, storage area networks, tape, blade storage and virtualization -- to solve their storage dilemmas. And they're using a lot of them. Midsize enterprises are expected to spend about $6 billion on external disk storage alone by 2011, according to IDC, representing compound annual growth of 11 percent.

"The midtier has been on a migration path for the past two years from direct-attached storage to networked storage," says Darren Patoni, president of The I.T. Workshop, which provides network, telephony and storage solutions to both small and midsize companies. "We never thought midsize companies would have to store and back up terabytes of data -- but today, they routinely do."

This surfeit of data presents a huge opportunity -- and the market is quite broad. "Obviously, within the 'M' of SMB there are firms at the high end that look like small enterprises, and some at the low end that look like smaller companies," says Pete Koliopoulos, vice president of global channel marketing at EMC. For both types of accounts, the most successful solution providers often act as the customer's outsourced IT department, melding their technical prowess with deep knowledge of the customer's operations and key business and technology concerns.

What the 'M' Wants
When considering a storage purchase, midsize customers typically home in on the following issues:

• Return on investment
• Technological obsolescence
• Ease of deployment and use
• Scalability
• Business continuity

Midsize corporations may have a few more IT dollars to spend than their small-business cousins do, but they are still cost-conscious and want to invest wisely. That means evaluating purchases in terms of whether they can save time and/or money by increasing productivity of users and IT staff. It also means planning for future growth by purchasing scalable, open storage solutions that don't chain them to a particular vendor.

"One of the biggest mistakes smaller businesses make -- and they only make it once -- is thinking they have to go cheap," Patoni says. "If they make a bad choice at the beginning, they have to replace almost everything. They then realize they should have done it right the first time."

Concerns about future growth make scalability and nonproprietary technologies critical issues, ensuring that customers "won't outgrow their storage system and require a heavy replacement," Patoni says. After all, no business wants to lose its existing investment when it needs to add storage capacity or change technologies. Midsize companies also expect storage solutions to be easy to install and use. "They are sensitive to the fact that they don't have extensive IT resources, so they want something that's very easy to deploy and optimize," Rauch of HP says. And they are concerned about business continuity issues such as backup and data replication, both on- and off-site. This helps account for the move away from direct-attached storage toward centralized, networked solutions. "Centralized storage results in better efficiency and is much easier to manage and protect," says Koliopoulos of EMC.

New Product Plays
In the past year, manufacturers have unveiled a range of storage systems designed to address midmarket storage needs.

In September, for example, HP took the wraps off HP StorageWorks All-in- One (AiO) SB600c Storage Blade, which works in both its new "Shorty" BladeSystem c3000 and the existing BladeSystem c7000. The blade storage concept benefits midsize customers, HP believes, due to its flexibility, ease of use and modest cost. The new unit provides shared storage for application servers and enhanced storage for file serving, along with application-centric software for storage management -- while fitting into an energy and space efficient blade enclosure.

"HP has listened well, and Shorty will be the answer for our midsize customers," says Valerie Reamer, president of GekkoTek Adaptive IT Solutions, an HP-only solution provider.

For its part, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) released a portfolio of enhancements across its midrange storage line to address concerns about rising energy costs and the need for heightened security. A new Power Savings capability for the AMS and WMS midrange lineup enables customers to power down volumes or disks when they are not being accessed by a business application. The volumes can then be powered up quickly when the application requires them, HDS reports. The company has also unveiled an entry-level storage system called Simple Modular Storage that delivers consumer-quality levels of usability for secure, reliable storage of data.

Earlier this year, EMC introduced its CLARiiON CX3-10 UltraScale networked storage system and EMC RecoverPoint/SE software for networkbased asynchronous replication in midtier storage environments. To meet the needs of companies deploying network storage for the first time, EMC reports, the system includes iSCSI SAN connectivity for applications such as Microsoft Exchange, and Fibre Channel for more bandwidth-intensive applications. EMC also offers three solutions designed to help midsize businesses consolidate, back up, archive and protect Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Exchange 2003 and Oracle RAC 10g environments.

On the backup front, Quantum has introduced the Scalar 50 entry-level tape library, said to simplify backup processes so that small and midsize customers can focus their attention on driving their businesses, not worrying about backups. Designed for seamless integration with disk systems, the Scalar 50 also supports disk-todisk- to-tape backup strategies. The unit accommodates data growth by scaling from 38 slots to 76 slots simply by adding a module.

With manufacturers expected to continue to invest in midmarketspecific storage, solution providers' ability to deliver customized yet affordable solutions will only increase over the near term and the long term.