LAN bags NEC storage

LAN Systems has signed a master distribution agreement with NEC Business Solutions to sell its range of storage products, in a deal that could see it tap into a potential $10 million in NEC storage channel sales this year.

The arrangement sees LAN distributing NEC's range of SAN, NAS and tape storage products which include Fibre Channel and IP products.

For the past two years the distributor has been selling storage-related professional services, but not storage products, due to tight margin structures, and vendors taking many storage deals direct.

“We couldn't work out how to make money out of the storage vendors,” Verykios said. “NEC has got a full range and we're dealing with one vendor for the lot and they [NEC] don't compete with the channel.”

Verykios claimed NEC had three named accounts and the rest of the business was open slather for the channel. “There are decent margins in the products, which are well supported locally. We eventually got to the point where we needed to be selling these products but we just had to get the right product,” he said.

He said Storage products are now becoming part of the network DNA and selling storage gives the distributor the ability to offer products and services from the storage layer where the data is kept, right out to the edge of the network.

LAN is attracting interest from traditional resellers that are selling for the 'EMC's of the world', Verykios said.