With research firm IDC estimating data storage doubling every two years, the need for storage resources which can handle complex and mixed systems that combine both file and block data (i.e. unified data storage)...
NBT Initiates .75 Target On IceWEB Storage (IWEB) w/10X Upside
IceWEB announced this week a major strategic shift in focus-from primarily R&D in the first half of 2012 to sales & marketing in the second half of the year.
In line with his vision to evolve IceWEB into a formidable challenger vs. the large, longstanding players, IceWEB's late CEO John Signorello placed several initiatives in motion up until his untimely passing in late May. These initiatives include:
- Release of the IceSTORM Operating System - IceWEB's feature-rich interface providing mid-market organizations with enterprise scale storage functionality at no additional cost.
- IceWEB 7000 Product Release -- High availability system for mission critical environments scales to 1.8 petabytes and supports SATA, SAS and SSD drives for maximum flexibility, performance and storage optimization
- Appointing Gaurang Mehta as IceWEB's CTO - 20+ year technology veteran bringing storage industry experience from LeftHand Networks (acquired by HP), Promark Technology and more.
- Microsoft Active Directory Integration - The first and only searchable and dynamic native Active Directory integration on unified systems streamlines share rights management and authentication
- IceSTORM Version 2.7 Release - With one-click configuration of Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) storage provisioning within the IceSTORM interface, Bolstered security, increased data integrity and alerting, enhanced speed and performance with IP multipathing capabilities, and more than 50 minor enhancements.
- Application for VMware Ready Certification on ESXi 5 - as a VMware TAP Elite partner, IceWEB is committed to maintaining tight integration with VMware's latest market-leading virtualization technology, IceWEB is in the process of obtaining VMware Ready product certification on VMware ESXi 5.
We will be meeting with IceWEB executives this week to buff out these important differentiation aspects to the IceWEB unified storage solutions into a NBT Research Report.
But the KEY value proposition of IceWEB storage vs. The Big Guys?
Up to 90% LESS cost of ownership per storage appliance...everything from initial cost to service and operating costs. The KEY to IceWEB's success now is to SELL that advantage to a storage thirsty world creating hundreds of petabytes (1000 terabytes) of new data storage EVERY DAY.
The Go-To-Market Selling Strategy:
Key components of IceWEB's go-to-market strategy to drive revenue for the company include:
- Channel Training - IceWEB is conducting technical training for qualified channel partners to transfer knowledge out into the field to address customers technical requirements on a larger scale
- Channel Engagement-IceWEB's team of inside sales representatives is immediately developing qualified sales opportunities for key IceWEB channel partners such as DataSpan, Emergent Systems Exchange and others.
- Channel Expansion -- IceWEB is aggressively recruiting new channel partners on a nationwide scale, leveraging its partnership with Promark Technology and its network of 7,000+ reseller partners.
"As a challenger brand with relatively limited resources in an established market, it's critical that IceWEB's technology is bullet-proof and highly differentiated," said Hal Compton, IceWEB's Chairman and CEO. "John did a great job assembling the product building blocks and team to take IceWEB to the next level - from a product and sales perspective. Now that the product is where it needs to be in terms of technology, quality and leadership, we are in a solid position to execute the company's sales and marketing strategy.
$1.6 Million Added To The War Chest
IWEB just raised $1.6 million from long standing private investors for the additional working capital they need to make sure they can deliver on their rapidly ramping new sales channels.
You can say they are locked and loaded...with what NBT considers to be the right product and the right time at the right price. Being named #1 MidRange Storage device by prestigious user survey group DCIG over IBM, Dell, NetApp, EMC , HP and Sun Micro/Oracle has moved IceWeb unified storage solutions to the top of many buyers lists.
We think the killer app is they deliver #1 rated unified storage replication support at up to 90% LOWER cost-that's the sizzle.
Now as in all cases where a company loses a founding CEO, we are sure June sales ground to a halt as customers waited to see how the company would move forward. But we are sure all or most of any sales stopped after the passing of CEO Signorello were NOT lost and pushed into the July-September quarter.
We are NOT looking at the 2nd quarter-it's now a second half 2012 and 2013 story all the way.
Bottom-line: short term weakness in the stock is what we LOOK for as entry points-anything under .25 a share we consider to be a value based on our $1.25 target for 2013.
About IceWEB, Inc.
Headquartered just outside of Washington, D.C., IceWEB manufactures award-winning, high performance unified data storage appliances with enterprise storage management capabilities at a fraction of the price of traditional providers. Through thin provisioning, target deduplication and inline compression, IceWEB's unified storage arrays enable standardization, consolidation and optimized storage utilization for virtual and cloud environments, saving up to 90% of storage costs, while reducing space, power and cooling requirements and simplifying storage management. For more information please call 800-465-4637 or visit www.IceWEB.com.
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