With the announcement of IBM to enter the Fibre Channel Storage and Storage Area Network (SAN) business, Maxtec Ltd, a dominant player in the storage system market in South Africa, will be accelerating the growth of their strategic partnership with IBM in Europe and South Africa.
"The storage solutions that Maxtec provides have undergone a significant transformation over the last few years. Storage is rapidly moving from the periphery to the heart of corporate IT. In the last decade the demand for substantial amounts of reliable storage space has increased dramatically, mainly due to the complexity of new applications," says Maxtec Ltd managing director, George Talbot.
Maxtec is the only South African distributor of the entire range of IBM midrange to high-end storage solutions to large and medium enterprises that have a need for substantial data storage capacity. As an IBM Business Distributor, Maxtec has achieved the status of Premier Business Partner in providing value-added business solutions in the storage market.
With the technical skill set Maxtec has access to through its 20% interest in UK mass storage specialist, Sagitta Performance Systems, the company has a significant advantage over IBM`s competitors. "In this business partnership Sagitta has gained from Maxtec`s business skills, whilst the locally listed company has had access to Sagitta`s international technical skills," states Talbot.
SAN is scaleable manageable storage that is ultimately a more intelligent (has more microprocessor power) storage device. The basic concept underlying SAN is that stored data can often clog up a client/server environment. By separating the application and operating environment from the storage environment, the two dedicated networks can co-operate more efficiently with one another.
SAN allows machines to directly access storage resources, improving availability, performance and resilience. It expands the workgroup idea from a few stations into digital, facility-wide storage connections to provide access to common data; streamlining tedious tasks such as back-up and disaster recovery.
According to Seagate CEO, Steve Luczo in the October 98 Edition of Var Business magazine on Mass Storage, Luczo states that Seagate believes that the storage opportunity is bigger than PC LAN/WAN and networking. "This explains why we are enthusiastic over IBM`s new software developments, because there is no doubt that it is coming and this provides us with an opportunity to sell scaleable storage subsystems effectively through the channel," states Maxtec MD, George Talbot.
IBM`s SAN initiatives and the new SAN storage solutions help customers extract value from their business information, by improving their IT resource management and information sharing - any time, anywhere across storage networks, regardless of vendor computing systems and software applications. The initiatives concerning connectivity, management, exploitation and services provide the foundation for the Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks.
IBM`s new products which Maxtec will distribute include three FC SAN Connectivity solutions: IBM Fibre Channel RAID Storage Server, IBM Storage Area Network Data Gateway and SAN Data Gateways; as well as two new FC SAN management software solutions.
Where IBM has concentrated its mass storage efforts on IBM installations only in the past, it now has widened its focus to include storage solutions on other platforms. It is in this arena that the relationship between Sagitta and Maxtec has already led to benefits.
As this emerging combination of technologies continues, Maxtec Ltd is now in a position to take the lead in the South African market; bridging the gap between manufacturers and customers to deliver working installations will ultimately should boost productivity and profitability.
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