Express Data guns for $40M in storage sales

The distributor is also aiming to build a storage business unit this year and wants between 10 and 15 percent of its $400 million in revenues to be generated from storage sales, according to Peter Masters, marketing and operations director at Express Data. Currently storage sales make up less than 10 percent of ED's revenues.

While Masters could not put a figure on projected Quantum sales alone this year, he said storage along with the graphics market are key areas of focus for the company in 2003.

Under the Quantum deal, ED is distributing Quantum's range of autoloaders, enterprise libraries for NAS and SANs and enhanced products for backup and restore. ED joins ACA Pacific, LAN 1 and Optistor on Quantum's local distribution books.

For ED, the Quantum deal adds to existing storage distribution agreements with HP, Computer Associates, Veritas and IBM. Masters said: 'Storage has been an area where we always thought we could take a bigger share of the market.'

In order to build a separate storage business unit, ED will invest in sales and pre-sales expertise. Quantum has begun a sales and technical training program for ED staff due for completion by the end of February.

ED has also appointed David Peach as product manager for the Quantum account while a team of pre-sales engineers will assist with reseller enquiries. Commenting on the deal, Mike Sparkes, product marketing manager at Quantum, said the vendor appointed ED after recognising its strong storage sales team and commitment to growing the market.

He claimed that Quantum has a broader range of storage hardware products than its competitors and added: “If we had the bandwidth to have every distributor in Australia selling our stuff we'd probably do it.”