ACA Pacific adds Maxtor hard drives

Melbourne-based distributor ACA Pacific has added Maxtor hard drives to its storage portfolio.

Raj Saini, marketing manager at ACA Pacific, said Maxtor's whole range, including IDE, enterprise and external drives, would be added to the storage and security specialist's lineup. ACA Pacific already distributed hard drives from Seagate and Fujitsu, he said.

'It's a question of having a total complete solution for our customers. We are always looking to grow our product range,' Saini said. 'We focus on a particular sweet spot for each vendor.'

He said that Maxtor's sweet spot was around 'SCSI drives and what-not' and Fujitsu's around notebook drives. Saini conceded that Seagate had similar products to Maxtor's but argued that ACA Pacific wanted to give customers a choice.

Ingram Micro and Easy Integrated already distribute Maxtor. 'There are a lot of volume distributors that sell hard drives and various other products as well,' he added.

Saini said that ACA Pacific, which formed in 1998, had been 'very strong' in storage for several years but the market was gaining momentum.

'I think we're almost there, although we're a small company,' he said. 'Storage is a hot area but it has been pretty static for the last two to three years. We expect to see growth of 20 to 30 percent ... I'm sure it will be a very lucrative area for resellers.'

Storage products coming out had proved very similar to each other but vendors had started to think about providing applications to niche markets this year, Saini said.

Vendors had also started to pay more attention to SMB storage needs. While SMB-related storage products had always been around, he said, vendors had started to focus more on that side of the market in their marketing initiatives.

'The focus has been on the corporate side,' Saini said.

ACA Pacific claimed in a statement that the agreement gave Maxtor one of the largest storage distribution networks in Australia.

Craig Davis, Australia and New Zealand country manager at Maxtor, said high-capacity SATA drives were a key to growing the enterprise storage market. 'Because of growing demand to store static data,' Davis said.

Maxtor had chosen ACA Pacific for its expertise, Davis said.

ACA Pacific has offices in Sydney, Perth and Brisbane and a warehouse in Melbourne.