The wholly owned Indian subsidiary of the US-based $9.66-billion EMC Corporation, will launch specific products for the SMB segment and sell the same at a place convenient for the buyers to buy. According to Manoj Chugh, president-India and Saarc, the company would launch Insignia range of products for the SMB segment.

"We will introduce distributor programmes specially for targetting the SMB segments," said Arun Rawtani, vice president-South India.

The company is also focussing its guns on the Tamil Nadu market where information technology (IT) and IT enables services (ITES) companies are setting up shop in good numbers. In Tamil Nadu the Insignia products are retailed by Redington and Select Technlogies.

Speaking about the market size Chugh said that the Indian market for external storage devices is around $200 million and is growing at a rate of 15 per cent. "We have 21 per cent market share in this market."

He said globally information is growing at over 70 per cent per annum whereas the IT budgets grow by single digit. There is a need to access and share information in real time across the global enterprise and also ensure regulatory compliance.

According to Chugh, the company has plans to double its headcount to 3,600 by 2010. In order to develop a talent pool on professions in data storage sector EMC Data Storage has launched the EMC Academy Programme tying up with several universities. As per the programme the company hopes to tie up with 50 universities by the end of this year.