Xiotech Extends ‘Cash for Disk Clunkers’ Through 2009

Minnesota-based Xiotech announced Oct. 5 that it is extending what turned out to be a popular sales program, “Cash for Disk Clunkers,” through the end of the calendar year.

The Cash for Disk Clunkers program isn’t far off the path set by President Obama in the automobile industry, except that there are no federal dollars involved. Xiotech allows organizations to trade in old, inefficient disk drives and receive $1,000 per terabyte toward the purchase of an equal amount of capacity on a new Xiotech Intelligent Storage Element system.

These include the Emprise 7000, Emprise 7000 Edge and Emprise 5000 system, and VM Storage Solution. There is no limit to the amount of capacity organizations can trade in.

Xiotech was the first storage company to institute the “Cash for Clunkers” program last summer. Pillar Data Systems put together a similar program in late August. It apparently worked well for them, too.

Xiotech Vice President of Marketing Mike Hoch was asked to quantify how the program has performed thus far.

“The program was an overwhelming success,” Hoch told The Station. “We increased our pipeline by more than 20 percent and accelerated sales cycles dramatically. It also moved our product into larger organizations that were seeking to consolidate isolated islands of aged storage.”

Is Xiotech using a third-party service provider to help with the transitions? Pillar Data employed partner Key Equipment Finance to handle the individual transactions.

“Yes, Xiotech channel partners are adept at data migration and were leveraged to assist customers in the adoption of the Emprise products,” Hoch said. “Our channel partners were instrumental to the success of this program.”

For more information, go here.