Storage company Maxtec has set up Africa`s first IBM TotalStorage Solution Centre (TSSC) in Sandton with an initial capital outlay of R4 million.
The TSSC programme is a global project by IBM in which the company sponsors certified business partners to set up dedicated network storage demonstration facilities. Initiated a year ago, there are now 120 IBM TSSCs worldwide.
Mike Styer, Maxtec`s senior technologist responsible for the TSSC, says: "Customers have far greater confidence in spending money on storage technology if they can see how it works before they buy it.
"Before we set up this centre, customers could only see network storage in action at another customer`s site. That was often an awkward and limiting situation, with only part of a system being viewable or configurations being too customised to be relevant to general circumstances," he says.
"Having our business partners run the TSSCs, we are able to reach more customers as well as ensuring, through the business partner`s understanding of their local markets, that a customer in a given country gets the solution best suited to him," notes Ben Gosling, IBM SA`s storage solutions manager.
Besides the R4 million capital outlay by Maxtec for the establishment of the centre, IBM contributed to the project with sponsorship of hardware and software as well as ongoing maintenance and security.
"The investment has been certainly been worth it to us, not only in terms of our increased ability to satisfy customers but also our relationship with IBM," says Styer. "There are very few companies who would have the vision and ability to put a marketing and customer service tool of this magnitude in our hands."
IBM`s research division estimates that the amount of digital data stored by companies worldwide will increase 13-fold to 43.3 exabytes by 2004. An exabyte is roughly one million gigabytes.
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