Storage specialist EData has spun off a new company to become the first distributor to focus entirely on IBM storage products.
Now on the hunt for resellers, the new company, Bluestor, will stock the full range of IBM storage products as of early August and is awaiting the much-anticipated arrival of the LTO product, which is set to rival Quantum DLT.
"Bluestor has been set up as an independent distribution company specifically to handle IBM storage products and intends to sell IBM storage products through the entire reseller channel," says David Davoren, GM of Bluestor. "We will try to supply to existing IBM distributors as well as to the open market."
The deal is expected to generate an annual revenue of $8-10 million, and since the contracts were signed three weeks ago, the 15-strong Bluestor team has been settling into the Sydney offices which it shares with EData. Bluestor plans to open offices in Brisbane and Melbourne in August increasing its workforce by another 15 staff.
According to Davoren, IBM is looking to step outside of its traditional base by the appointment of a pureplay storage distributor. "They've been looking for us to the same job as we did for Quantum with the launch of the DLT product," he says. "Quantum DLT is the most popular brand of tape drive for mid-range server products and we were the exclusive distributor for that for the first three-and-a-half years and responsible for the launch of that product in Australia."