EMC seals deal with Chinese server giant Lenovo for desktop NAS

Storage giant EMC and Chinese PC and server maker Lenovo have completed the formation of a joint venture that will see EMC’s Iomega small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) NAS hardware bundled with Lenovo compute products.

The deal will see EMC’s Iomega desktop NAS devices and rackmount NAS hardware bundled into co-branded server and storage solutions aimed at small businesses and branch offices. 

Iomega NAS devices are available up to 48TB capacity in desktop and rackmount format. The Iomega devices will provide storage capacity for Lenovo’s ThinkServer and ThinkStation server products.

The alliance could be a fruitful one for EMC. According to a recent Gartner report, Lenovo recently overtook HP to become the largest PC manufacturer in the world and being a Chinese company has access to potentially huge markets in mainland China.

Desktop NAS and small SME-focused NAS products provide cheap and easy-to-configure storage for very small businesses. Most products offer capacity in the four or five-drive range and a small number of RAID level options.

The alliance was initially announced last August and is seen as EMC finding a replacement in the small business market for former partner Dell. EMC and Dell went their separate ways in 2011 when the Texas-based based Dell signalled greater ambitions in storage with the purchase of Compellent, a mid-range SAN maker.