EMC, HP expand VTL portfolios

Having shipped more than 35PB of CLARiiON Disk Library (CDL) capacity, EMC has emerged as the early market leader in the virtual tape library (VTL) space. But other leading vendors, in particular, HP, are gaining market traction.

True, HP has a way to go to catch up to EMC on a petabyte-per-petabyte shipped comparison (HP hit the 5PB mark in April), but the company is building an impressive portfolio of products. Its new low-end VTL system -- the VLS1000i -- leverages technology from Overland. HP OEM's its higher-end VTLs from SEPATON.

While HP's VLS1000i is targeting the heart of the SMB market, EMC's new DL210 system is positioned a little higher at the mid-size enterprise/branch office level. The DL210 scales from 5TB to 24TB and lists from $50K. HP's VLS1000i, meanwhile, has 1.5TB of usable capacity (2TB raw) and is priced from $6K.

With EMC and HP in the driver's seat, I expect both products to be received well in their respective target markets. They're both natural evolutions or extensions of the VTL market.