Analysis

posted on 19 August 2008 13:07

Quantum has slashed the prices of its GoVault removable disk data protection products by up to 30 percent and doubled the maximum capacity to 320GB. In the sales sense GoVault has been SlowVault and Quantum is trying to fix that.

The product is based on 2.5-inch serial ATA (SATA) drives and these are now available with 500GB capacity, hence a move to 320GB is quite safe, and also necessary since the removable disk market leader, ProStor, has already announced   500GB model. ProStor has 95 percent of the removable disk market, according to IDC, and has won two tier one OEMs, Dell and HP, also Imation and Tandberg Data, which latter company makes the drives and docking stations for Dell and HP.

Quantum has no such OEM partners and you can buy GoVault docks and cartridges from its distribution partners, online store, Amazon and other online retailers. Against this background Quantum has decided to cut prices by up to 30 percent across the GoVault range and double capacity. The new 320GB cartridge costs under $300, probably code for $299, whereas the 160GB model used to cost $339, meaning a per GB cut at the high-end of 60 percent or more.

Yet ProStor isn't cheap. A 320GB RDX cartridge can cost $559.99. Even more bizarrely the GoVault comes with de-duping software for its Windows and Linux hosts that only writes changed blocks in the backup process to the GoVault cartridge, providing up to 20:1 compression. It means a 160GB GoVault drive could hold up to 3.2 terabytes of deduplicated data making it amazingly cheap on a per GB basis.

The deduping uses third-party software and is carried out on the host server before data is written to the GoVault disk. Even with this burden a GoVault backup session is much, much faster than writing data to tape. ProStor's edge isn't down to speed.

ProStor's RDX single instances files to be written to the cartridge and then compresses the data at an up to 2:1 rate; much less efficient in data storage terms. Yet GoVaults are not selling like ProStor RDX' and customers clearly don't rate the deduplication that GoVaults have over the RDX file single instancing and compression.

The RDX software is archiving software and it provides compliance type functionality like an audit trail and search facilities and legal hold. GoVault is straight backup software and has encryption. It's not an inferior product at all yet it simply isn't selling anywhere near as well as ProStor's higher capacity, more expensive product.

It looks as if ProStor has first mover advantages, a compliance offer that's attractive, and two great OEMs. Quantum's price cut will help but it had better get OEMs on board, with uncommitted ones including IBM and EMC. Well why not? GoVault and RDX are typically SME offerings and EMC wants to go after EMC customers with Iomega - ah. Iomega has its Rev removable drives so that probably rules EMC out.

Unless Quantum can win IBM to its cause then it will probably have to go after second tier server OEMs and, meanwhile, hope its distribution tape channel will take to GoVault with a lot more enthusiasm than it has shown so far.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}