ASI cut its teeth as a PC components distributor, particularly selling hard drives. But now, the Fremont, Calif.-based company wants a bigger bite of the storage pie.
“We are pursuing new products lines like Hitachi, Computer Associates [International], Veritas [Software], LSI Logic—as well as several NAS vendors to round out our product offering and deliver complete solutions to customers,” said Brian Paterson, vice president of product marketing and management at ASI.
Paterson expects ASI’s storage business to almost double this year, with its overall revenue increasing by nearly 10 percent. “We’ve taken our time growing the business, but the demand has been insatiable over the past year, and [the fourth quarter] started very strong for storage,” he said.
The distributor’s traditional disk-drive business comes from Seagate, Western Digital and Samsung, but ASI expects to make several additional vendor announcements in coming weeks regarding its data integrity and data backup line card, Paterson said.
“Our biggest focus is end-to-end storage. Our goal is to get outside the desktop and server box. Inside the box, we’ve done very well,” Paterson said.
More end users are upgrading their PCs with external storage drives, Paterson said. ASI expects to capitalize on that trend, he said.
“That’s their biggest need. Consumers are using gigabytes for digital photos, music and other files,” he said.
Solution providers said ASI’s strategy fits in line with their own: selling higher-end storage solutions.
“As a sales rep, I don’t focus on the commodity stuff. I focus on the value add, the appliances, continuous data protection, storage virtualization—those technologies that require expertise beyond just spindles. The value in storage is not in raw capacity, it’s about data security and getting the data where it needs to be,” said Tim Francisco, account manager at Networks Plus Technology Group, Poway, Calif.
Meanwhile, ASI also is expanding its storage business to new markets such as Mexico, Paterson said. The distributor acquired Mexmal Mayorista last July.
