South African small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are fast running out of computer storage space as large amounts of data flow in and out of companies daily.
So says Hilton Haefele, networking product manager at Acer in South Africa. "Data storage capacity on PCs and servers is growing at a rate of 120% per month, but SMEs are struggling under mountains of data accumulating at an ever faster pace.
"The problem of diminishing space on companies` servers is twofold: firstly it`s a mindset where users have become spoilt for space, accumulating rather than deleting old files and emails on the hard drive," says Haefele.
"Secondly, the e-business revolution has brought with it a need for large enterprise solutions to be installed on company servers - as a business grows so the need for more memory hungry solutions, such as ERP and eCRM, taking up enormous amounts of hard drive space."
Most businesses however, address this problem by purchasing a new server instead of the storage that is actually required. This is an expensive mistake with long term cost implications, as a new server provides only a fraction of the hard drive space that a storage solution offers, with a part of the purchase price going towards unnecessary processing power.
Leading global IT vendor, Acer, has introduced two new storage solutions which address the ongoing need for high performance, scaleable and secure data storage solutions in SMEs, instantly adding up to 15 hard drives to an existing system.
Acer`s offering consists of the AccuRAID series, designed as a low cost solution for small businesses with 5-50 users needing storage to backup data and create more space on their servers. The AccuSTOR range meets the needs of medium sized enterprises requiring a high end product to run large applications such as ERP, databases and warehousing.
"Storage is not rocket science. In fact it`s really very simple: In the same way that a traditional filing cabinet will eventually not be enough to hold all your paper files, so a computer hard drive will also run out of space. The solution? Add more hard drives, in the same way that you would add more filing cabinets.
"Even the acronyms are simple," says Haefele. "JBOD which is an acronym for one of the Acer storage models stands for `Just a Bunch of Disks`."
Acer`s storage solutions have been designed in an uncomplicated way that eliminates the need for any technical wizardry. "These business solutions are easy to install, plugging in directly to either the server or network, providing
"These new storage ranges complement Acer`s end-to-end networking solution, providing flexible and cost effective solutions to SMEs," concludes Haefele.
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