Maxtor, Adaptec Join Forces To Push SAS Adoption

The two Milpitas, Calif.-based vendors are sending a SAS evaluation kit, including a controller, an enclosure and four hard drives to system builders to show the benefits of the new technology and to prove it is available, said Paula Swanson, product marketing manager at Maxtor. The two companies also are providing compatibility testing for specific products to help system builders deploy the product.

“We put the bundles together and give them to system builders to seed the customer base,” Swanson said. “This essentially allows someone to upgrade a server they already have.”

Supporters of SAS believe the technology has great potential because it offers higher speeds than current low-cost options like SCSI or Serial ATA but is cheaper than the high-end Fibre Channel.

Because of the newness of SAS technology, it is important to provide end-to-end offerings, so solution providers and their customers can test the SAS experience and get questions answered about how to use it, said Jason Blosil, branded product portfolio manager at Adaptec. “We want to make sure there&'s no finger-pointing,” he said.

Though some system builders have been using the bundle to evaluate the potentials of SAS, others say vendors still need to do more promotion of SAS in the industry to help customers realize the technology&'s benefits.

Stephen Moll, director of operations at Computer Technology Link, a Portland, Ore.-based system builder, said customers need to see the performance benefits of SAS to be willing to make a move. Even then, he noted, they are resistant to untried technology.

“They prefer to wait for the second generation,” he said, noting that first-generation SATA drives did not work as well as expected.

Andy Kretzer, director of sales and marketing at Bold Data Technology, a Fremont, Calif.-based system builder, said that the savings from bundled products are not enough to attract customers.

“I don&'t think saving a few dollars here and there is worth it to shift to a new platform,” Kretzer said. “Bundles can be nice to get lower-cost products for us to test, but offering a better price is not going to attract customers.”