Byte and Switch: What is the biggest challenge facing storage companies?
Beeler: A lot of companies showed poor performance in the second quarter this year. Part of the problem was that solutions that were focused on enterprise customers fell down in feature set and price. The challenge for many companies is how to bring enterprise products to the mid-tier and not eat into sales at the high end.
We can enter low and move up. There's no need for us to preserve pricing at the high end and then push into the mid-tier.
Channel conflict's also a problem. Companies with large direct sales organizations find it very difficult to move to another channel. But the mid-tier companies like integrators.
Also, in the last year, we've seen companies redoing their purchasing process. In the past, you could deal with a department or a manager or a division and sell them one thing. Now, the purchasing people gain more power because there's a whole set of legal issues to comply with. A lot of that has slowed down enterprise purchases.
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