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NEC Plans US Storage Push: Page 3 of 4

“We have 2,500 systems in the broadcast industry alone,” says Dutch, explaining that NEC and RAID are already eyeing some “huge, Petabyte-size opportunities.”

”We have an order teed-up for more than a Petabyte," notes Bob Picardi, RAID’s COO. “We signed the deal a few weeks ago.”

The exec explained that one of RAID’s government agency customers had asked the vendor to help it solve a major drive failure problem, which prompted today’s OEM deal with NEC.

”It was [to do] with the inability of the [agency’s existing] RAID controller to pick up all the data that was written to the drives. Our mandate was to go out and find a solution,” he says, adding that NEC uses its Phoenix technology to identify failing drives.

At least one analyst thinks that RAID could offer NEC a good route into the U.S. storage market but warns that there is plenty of work to do before the vendor really establishes its presence.