At CES last week I caught up with Iomega UK’s Country Manager, Andy Connor and the European Product Manager, George Mellissargos. As you’ll be aware, Iomega launched the new Iomega TV with Boxee at CES alongside new a software platform for their network attached storage range. We used our meeting at the show to discuss the trends that Iomega are seeing in the home and small business storage market, and the implications for the company’s product range going forward. In the course of the interview, the company shared some of the strategy behind their recently announced partnership with Boxee and creation of a hybrid media receiver/NAS device and hinted at forthcoming partnerships with European telecommunications partners to further drive adoption of network attached storage in the home.
WGS: You’ve announced Iomega TV with Boxee here at CES this week, which differs from D-Link’s Boxee Box in the addition of network attached storage features. Are you seeing a trend in users wanting a hybrid storage/media receiver for the living room?
George Mellissargos: Especially in Europe, where many live in apartments, there’s a tendency for people to put their NAS device next to the TV, so it’s this has created the opportunity for one box which can do multiple jobs.
WGS: I know that in many of those homes, the router is also placed very nearby for the NAS’ network connection – so did you consider including router functionality in their at any point?
GM: With a router, it gets a bit more complicated – not technically, but with regard to the telcos – it’s a different game there. You know it might come, but I don’t think we’ll see that as a general model. So for now, the first step is this one and then the challenge is to get as much content from the Internet for the product.
WGS: Which I guess in Europe in particular is a difficult task? BBC iPlayer is there, but we know that the rest of the apps are a little hit and miss.
GM: There is work on that too. Expect that to change – we can add apps to Boxee at any time and there’s definitely more services down the road. So expect that as our partners work on adding new apps, the consumer will benefit from those.
WGS: I spoke with Viewsonic earlier in the week with regard to their Boxee TV, and certainly their European guys were a little dubious about taking the product to Europe. Boxee did tell me they were working hard to content acquisition now, though.
George: Yes, we’re working right now with them on providers. So, you’re going to see some of the local country providers making their apps available for the Boxee platform.
WGS: Do you guys leave that entire to Boxee, or do you work together to secure those deals?
GM: No, we participate with them. Obviously it’s a partnership, so we help each other there, to approach the TV and content providers. What we are doing, and it’s a major differentiation for us is adding the NAS capability. So it’s not only a multimedia player with Boxee on it, but it has out own NAS stack with most of the features we have on our standalone NAS devices – it’s all on the same box. So the box can stream to other devices or it can stream from a second NAS in your basement or whatever. It tries to fit into all of the different requirements we see from our customer base – you have the prosumers that have more complicated setups in their home with many devices, then the entry-level consumers who want to buy their first box – they’re all different types of people that we’re trying to attract.
WGS: Did you look at a range of different media receiver platforms before selecting Boxee for the product?
GM: No, we did look at others too. I don’t know who exactly, but what I can tell you for sure is that our US colleagues looked at a long list of potential providers. So at the end of the day, we tried to find the right partner who fulfilled the majority of our requirements. We needed a partner who had the space to develop their own applications, that was important to us. We’re actually doing the same things on our standard NAS products. We’re coming out with an SDK, we’ve already made it available to our partners – it’s not widely available right now – and we want them to start building their own applications, to customize the NAS. We’re talking about OEM agreements and this kind of thing.
WGS: And will this require a new platform for your NAS devices?
GM: Yes, that’s the new platform we’re announcing at CES. The NAS software completely changes for all of our devices, obviously we’re starting with our single bay and dual bay and then very soon after that, a month after that we’ll add our four bay. All of our NAS devices, from the smallest to the biggest, will get our new NAS software.
WGS: And will it be available for existing owners?
GM: No, it’s not going to be available for existing customers to update.
WGS: Right, so it will only appear on new devices?
GM: Yes.
WGS: Okay, so what kind of applications do you see developers creating for your NAS devices?
GM: It’s a bit early to say. What we’re trying to do is work on an OEM basis with big telecommunications companies, so maybe they would like to brand the device and sell it to their ADSL customers. A potential application there is to connect the device to their online storage service. At launch, we offer two generic services – one is a connection to Mozy, and the other is a connection to Amazon S3.
WGS: Are you getting interest from telcos in the device?
GM: Yes.
WGS: Across Europe?
GM: Across Europe.
WGS: That’s very interesting – it’s always been one of those scenarios that’s been talked about a lot.
GM: There is definitely interest – it’s too early to disclose any details but there’s definitely strong interest and we’re working with some of them… eventually you’re going to hear news about that.
WGS: So your new software is just shipping on the single bay device at the moment?
GM: No, there’s a double bay too – it’s not a new new product in that it’s the same hardware as we have today for our dual bay, but it has the new software.
WGS: And George, in terms of what you’re seeing out there in terms of storage trends right now, do you believe a 1-2 bay device is the right one for the consumer, or should you be doing four bays?
GM: Well, it depends on the market and what’s happening right now, from data we see – it doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone, but what we’re seeing especially in Europe is a lot of demand for the dual bay. Actually, the dual bay is performing for us, in terms of sales, as well as the single bay. That’s a bit of a surprise when you think that the single bay has a lower price.
