2009 décembre 03

News ITDistri.com

décembre 3, 2009

Acer launches Gateway servers and storage systems

décembre 3, 2009 – 7:00 :: Miscellaneous, Product referencing

Just a few months after launching its Gateway notebooks and PCs, targeted to major account and SMB markets, Acer completes its professional offer with high-end servers and storage systems, which were presented Tuesday in Milan, Italy. Its current Acer Altos servers will continue to be sold for the coming months to SMB, before being merged with Gateway offer. Including towers, racks and blades, Gateway servers should be priced quite aggressively, although Acer does not wish to enter a price war on this market, in order to support its still building brand image.

Acer has also unveiled a NAS and SAN offer, in partnership with Hitachi Data Systems. This partnership fits in line with a first one, signed 3 years ago and very active in countries where Acer enjoys a strong marketshare, like Italy or Germany. With this expanded partnership, HDS hopes to leverage on Acer distribution network to raise a stronger profile in SMB products and markets. Indeed, HDS is strong on high-end storage systems, which it mostly sells directly to end users. On lower-end products, HDS works with a few distributors (namely, Ingram Micro, Bell Micro and Zycko) as well as a network of system integrators in Eastern Europe. But due to a lack of marketing, low end HDS storage products mainly sell as a complement to high-end, centralized systems used by major accounts, according to Mike Walker, Senior VP Global Channels. Thanks to the partnership with Acer and a common marketing fund, HDS thus hopes to broaden its reach in distribution.

All Gateway servers and storage systems will be exclusively sold indirectly, through an authorized reseller network and broadliners Tech Data or Esprinet. They will be available between now and Q110, depending on products, in Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

According to Gianpiero Morbello, Corporate VP Marketing & Brand, Acer targets with its Gateway servers and storage systems HPC (energy and defense, space exploration, weather, educational, proprietary code benchmarks), vertical technical computing (automotive, aerospace, oil and gas, biochemistry, manufacturing, financial clustering, ISV and IHV), cloud computing, ISP and datacenter markets.

It is working on several tools and services to support its resellers : dedicated teams to cover government public tenders ; a Solution Center based in Lugano (Switzerland) to help VAR fine-tune their vertical solutions ; Competence Centers which will act as showcases for Gateway technologies (the first being implemented in Pisa University) ; a dedicated financial support (being worked on) ; a deal registration program common with HDS ; and finally an ERP integration between Gateway, Tech Data and resellers, to streamline relations between them. Asked about signing with VADs to distribute Gateway storage systems and servers, Gianpiero Morbello does not exclude the move. But he explains that this will be done only when current distribution processes are polished up.

Winncom transmits data with Javad

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:32 :: Product referencing

Wireless modem vendor Javad has officially appointed networking specialist Winncom as its distributor in CIS. Winncom will distribute Javad products throught its offices in Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

A new commercial director for Tech Data

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:32 :: Appointments

Belgium : broadliner Tech Data has appointed Carl Alloin as new commercial director. Carl was previously managing director for Clearwire mobile operator (source : Datanews Belgique).

Samsung signs up Pinnacle

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:26 :: Product referencing

South Africa : Samsung Electronics has appointed broadliner Pinnacle Africa as a distributor for its printers and notebooks. The appointment is immediately effective and means Pinnacle Africa will now distribute the full IT cluster of Samsung products, including monitors, hard drives, optical drives, data projectors, large format displays (LFD) and the newly-added printer and notebook ranges (source : IT Online South Africa).

Veracomp in software EDM

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:25 :: Product referencing

Poland : for the first time, value-added broadliner Veracomp has expanded its EDM offer with some software. It has indeed signed a partnership with BetaSoft for its eDokumenty workflow solution. Previously, Veracomp distributed only scanner and storage EDM hardware (source : Computer Reseller News Polska).

Verbatim prints in Blue(H)

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:25 :: New companies, Product referencing

Italy : young peripheral and supply specialist BlueH Technology, which is a spinof of Hyundai, has signed a distribution partnership with Verbatim for its toner cartridges, which come along its own inkjet products.

ArchiCAD enters Turkey

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:05 :: Product referencing

Turkey : Mac specialist Bilkom has introduced on local market architecture program ArchiCAD from Graphisoft (source : ComputerWorld Türkiye).

Triple AcceSSS for Azeti

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:04 :: Product referencing

Security VAD Triple AcceSSS has been appointed official distributor by Azeti Networks for both Austria and Switzerland (source : Inside Channels Schweiz).

ITway enriches its offer with Alteon

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:03 :: Product referencing

France : already an historical partner for Radware, network and security VAD ITway is now distributing Alteon solutions. Early this year, Radware acquires from Nortel its Alteon WebSystems Controler business. Together, Itway and Radware are now growing their offer by integrating load-balancing and acceleration Alteon solutions.

Computerlinks receives first Check Point ACE accreditation for hardware support

décembre 3, 2009 – 6:02 :: Miscellaneous

United Kingdom : network and security VAD Ccomputerlinks has achieved Check Point’s Appliance Collaborative Enhanced (ACE) status as part of the vendor’s Support Programme for Distributors. Computerlinks is the first global distributor in UK to achieve this from Check Point. The distributor underwent a rigorous certification process for the accreditation, which included high-level technical support training in Check Point and Nokia appliances in order to be able to guarantee specific levels of service delivery.