An Old Storage Player Gets A New Look

Once upon a time, Iomega was not the first name that came to mind when I thought about SMB data storage. My, how the times have changed.A couple of years ago, storage giant EMC bought Iomega, which until then had been known mostly for its once-ubiquitous Zip drives. Most of us don't think too much about Zip disks any more. (I have a couple of 100 MB Zip disks sitting in my desk, and that's where they'll stay -- unless I need a coaster.)

Make no mistake: Iomega still plays in the consumer market. But under EMC, the company has also blossomed into a provider of high-quality, reasonably priced SMB storage hardware.

Exhibit A is Iomega's new StorCenter ix12-300 network storage array. It'll hold up to a dozen 2TB drives, supports iSCSI, and works in either a NAS or SAN environment. And it'll do this for around $5,000.

Even down at the consumer end of the market, Iomega is doing some interesting things. Witness the glowing reviews of the iConnect, which is "basically a NAS box without the drive bays" and costs around $100.

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All in all, this is one of the more interesting corporate makeovers I've seen in quite a while. And it's certainly one of the most beneficial for small companies looking for storage on a budget.