IDS-G; McData's New Distributor
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McDATA a provider of storage networking solutions has announced the appointment of IDS-G as its national Australian distributor.

The decision is designed to increase market penetration for McDATA’s products and services in the Australian and New Zealand marketplace. The storage company traditionally sold products through a vendor/reseller market, through big name companies like IBM and EMC. This, according to Ken Cooper, country manager for Australia and New Zealand, McData is still a critical part of the company’s strategy. 

“Since our acquisition of CNT of July we want to showcase our total range of products. It will allow us to covers broader spectrum of the total storage market with a complete storage networking solution. Having a dedicated distributor also affords us the opportunity to increase traction, focus and support both at the reseller level and directly to the end user. This partnership will complete our go-to market strategy and complement our partner strategy. Our partners are still integral to our business, we’ve even appointed Brendan O’Reilly to the position of channel manager for Australia and New Zealand,” said Cooper.

For IDS-G, McDATA complements its existing portfolio, which encompasses solution in the data management and data storage field. According to Les Dunn, sales director for IDS-G the opportunity with McData will allow IDS-G to capitilise on the significant opportunity that exists within the small and medium-sized enterprise.

“We can better address the SME market than major vendors like IBM. All the major vendors are struggling over market share with each other at the top-end. While the SME part of the market place is exploding at a very quick rate,” he said. “We will be launching a series of sales and marketing promotions aimed at the SME market. These promotions will aim to heighten market growth and encourage resellers to further complement their current market offerings with the additional range of products now available form McDATA.” 

The price for McDATA products start from $4000 to half a million, Dunn believes the entry level is reasonable compared to a couple of years ago.

 

“The increase in importance of data has actually reduced the cost data storage products, so it’s more affordable for the SME sector. A couple of years ago if you had asked me the same question I would have said entry level products start at $8000. It’s all to do with equation; businesses are weighing the value of the company’s data to the risk of losing that data. When I was working at HD 2 years ago a terabyte of storage would’ve cost $100K, now you can get a disk for $30K.”