During CES, EMC and Lenovo finally unveiled the name of their joint venture, LenovoEMC. The news also marks the end of one of the most enduring brands in the SOHO and small and midsized business (SMB) storage markets.
“Iomega is Now LenovoEMC,” announced the firm on the Iomega website. The new company will make its home in Utah and Massachusetts. As its name suggests, Lenovo retains majority ownership of the new entity.
First announced in August, the joint venture kicks off the New Year with a plan to make IT market inroads by starting small.
Lenovo chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang remarked last summer, “Today’s announcement with industry leader EMC is another solid step in our journey to build on our foundation in PCs and become a leader in the new PC-plus era.” As a stepping stone, LenovoEMC is relying on technology from Iomega, EMC’s SMB storage division.
Iomega’s hardware, namely its ix and px networked storage solutions for SMBs, will now be offered under the LenovoEMC brand.
In 2013, LenovoEMC is launching new ix and px desktop NAS devices, including the all-new ix4-300d, which brings virtualization-friendly storage within reach of small businesses and remote branches. Bringing SAN functionality down from its lofty enterprise heights, the company will be offering new px12 rackmount arrays, with prices that start at $4,999.
In a statement, LenovoEMC’s president and general manager Eric Arcese signaled that his company’s path to the enterprise starts with SMBs. “With the joint venture now underway, there’s a real sense of opportunity and excitement as we work with our partners and customers to firmly establish LenovoEMC Ltd as a leader in the fast-growing global SMB storage market,” he said.
The team-up between the industry’s top data storage provider and the world’s biggest PC maker presents opportunities for both companies.
For EMC, the joint venture is expected to open doors to the potentially lucrative Chinese server and storage market. Lenovo, acting as an official OEM and reseller, will sell EMC’s enterprise-grade storage systems to its customers in the region. The companies plan to expand into other regions as fast as adoption rates and market momentum allow.
Lenovo, on the other hand, is venturing past PCs and is setting its sights on the data center. In August, Yang stated, “This partnership will help us fully deliver on our PC-plus strategy by giving us strong back-end capabilities and business foundation in servers and storage, in addition to our already strong position in devices.”