Quantum Unveils Lower-Priced Entry-Level F1000 NVMe Storage Appliance

After hearing from partners that sought cheaper NVMe storage appliances to fill the needs of smaller customers, digital storage vendor Quantum Corp. has launched its new lower-priced F1000 NVMe appliances in 39TB and 77TB capacities.

The new Quantum NVMe F1000 appliances include the same software-defined architecture introduced in the company’s more expensive F2000 model, which was unveiled a year ago, and aim to provide fast streaming performance and response times at a lower price. The F1000 models are 1U NVMe storage servers that include high performance without the high-availability features that are included in the pricier F2000 version. Quantum F1000 NVMe storage appliances are built to deliver performance that is five to 10 times faster than an equivalent SAS SSD storage array at a price similar to those older technologies.

The F series appliances are designed for use by movie and entertainment studios and other customers to accelerate the capture, editing and finishing of high-definition content, Quantum said. That content can include high-definition video used for movie, TV and sports production, as well as for marketing and advertising content. Other critical uses include image-based workloads that require high-speed processing, such as the data from a satellite feed, a drone or from a vehicle used in the development of new automated driver assistance systems (ADAS).

Eric Bassier, Quantum’s senior director of product marketing, told Channel Futures that the cheaper version of the F series appliances had been requested in recent months by partners and by customers to expand the use of the all-flash storage devices while not having to pay a premium for the high-availability features that highlight the F2000 model of the appliances.

Quantum’s Eric Bassier

“We have had good adoption of our F series line over the last year,” said Bassier. “The F2000 was kind of a Lexus level product. The one we are introducing now, the F1000, is kind of the Toyota of the line.”

Quantum meets with key partners often and in September the company met with the members of its internal VAR council, he said. At that meeting, the VARs told the company that the NVMe market is very hot and that they needed a more entry-level, lower-cost appliance to serve a segment of the marketplace that didn’t want to spend the extra money for the F2000 and the high-availability features that weren’t needed for their storage.

Quantum listened and went back to work to build and market what became the F1000, said Bassier.

“We went from concept to announced product in about one quarter,” he said. “It’s a good proof point about how agile Quantum can be when we get feedback from our partners. This product will enable our channel partners to put NVMe into customer situations and places that otherwise couldn’t have afforded it. We’ve priced it to be channel-friendly.”

The company’s hottest markets are in media, entertainment and Hollywood, he said. In the last 15 years, Quantum has been transitioning from being a tape-drive and hard-drive company into being more of an enterprise storage systems company a with strong focus on infrastructure for video and video like data. Virtually all of Quantum’s revenue comes through the channel.

“We view the channel as an extension of our own sales force so we look at it through that lens,” said Bassier.

Jason Kranitz, the president of systems integration at Integrated Media Technologies, a systems integrator and a Quantum channel partner, told Channel Futures that the new F1000 NVMe appliance will help his company better serve its customers with a lower-priced product that will help them join the NVMe revolution. Many larger storage companies don’t yet have …

… adequate NVMe products for sale, but Quantum jumped on it and has had good success, he said.

IMT Global’s Jason Kranitz

Smaller customers in particular were interested in products like the F2000 but found it to be too expensive for their needs and budgets, he said.

“There was tremendous demand from the client side … and there were a lot of requests to bring the price down,” said Kranitz. “It speaks to Quantum’s ability to listen to their clients and listen to the channel and respond quickly.”

Kranitz is a member of Quantum’s VAR council and said he was one of the members who were asking the company for this new product.

“The F1000 slots perfectly into what we are already doing today,” he said.

Tom Coughlin, principal digital storage analyst with Coughlin Associates, said the F1000 will make it possible for more organizations to be able to afford to have a layer of NVMe storage as primary storage in their operations.

“This is a great product for Quantum channel partners to be able to offer their clients who want the performance of NVMe storage but haven’t been able to afford the price of existing NVMe arrays,” said Coughlin. “It enables more customers to enjoy the performance of an NVMe array and it includes Quantum’s useful F-series software, which is also used in the higher priced F2000 products.”

Another storage analyst, Scott Sinclair of Enterprise Strategy Group, said video content continues to be a rapidly growing segment of data storage and that it requires fast storage.

“For the businesses that make their revenue off of this type of digital content, leveraging the right data storage infrastructure can deliver tremendous benefits,” he said. “In these industries, time saved often translates directly to business value. Here NVMe technology plays a vital role in accelerating access to data and improving application performance, less time wasted waiting on data. Quantum’s F1000 NVMe storage appliance is streamlined to deliver the right level of storage performance, while reducing both the size and the cost footprint, which is an enticing combination for the media industry.”