Contrary to rival propaganda, EMC's Insignia line of products will continue to live on as the preferred gear for small- and medium-sized businesses. That is until EMC kills the brand.

EMC's competitors in the storage game have suggested that the giant might scrap the Insignia kit launched last February due to a lack of customer interest. Well, that's not quite the case, according to EMC, which plans to keep the Insignia hardware and software on sale, despite some in-house restructuring.

EMC admits that it laid off close to 40 people in the Insignia group. Those workers focused mostly on marketing and administrative functions. The sales and engineering teams remain intact, according to an EMC spokeswoman.

"We're bringing the EMC Insignia product line out of incubation mode and into the mainstream because we rapidly gained momentum in the market," the spokeswoman said. "In fact, the flagship EMC Insignia products, EMC Clariion AX150 networked storage system and EMC Retrospect backup and recovery software, both experienced record quarters in Q3."

This, however, is a "mainstream mode" with a challenged future.

EMC vowed to keep the Insignia brand - meant as an SMB differentiator- "as long as it is useful."

"Over time, as EMC is more closely associated with success in SMB, the need for a separate SMB brand will diminish."

It's nice that customers can be part of this branding exercise.

EMC launched Insignia last year as a broad category meant to house some of its lower-end products. You can find the whole product line here, until EMC gets really good at selling it and takes it away. ®