Fujitsu Computer Products Institutes VAR Council

Fujitsu Computer Products of America

The objectives of the council were to get feedback from solution providers as to how they view Fujitsu in the channel and to present the company's product strategies regarding serial ATA and 2.5-inch hard drives, said Lorne Wilson, vice president of channel sales and marketing at the vendor.

Wilson said one of the most important topics brought up at the meetings was the need to do a lot more work on brand awareness in the channel. "We have just started pushing our brand in the channel in the last 18 to 20 months," he said. "In the past, we were exclusive with global OEMs. We had no need for channel exposure."

Fujitsu last quarter sold over 14 percent of its hard drives through the channel in the United States, up from less than 1 percent in early 2001.

Patrick Taylor, president of Proactive Technologies, a Dallas-based integrator of fault-tolerant servers and high-speed storage arrays for the graphics and print industry, said the event was a good opportunity to meet some of Fujitsu's key product and technology developers.

"It's interesting to see how accessible they are," Taylor said. "It's nice to see that some of these big guys see that some of the innovations come from guys like us. We can turn around a solution faster that the tier ones."

Because Taylor's customers typically deal with files of 500 Mbytes to 1.6 Gbytes in size, and a small office of eight people might have more than 2 Tbytes of data online, being able to custom-build storage arrays with disk-based backup capabilities is a must. "Very few industries have the ability to pack more Mbytes per man," he said.

As a result, Taylor's customers are looking for disk-to-disk backup solutions. "The new low-cost ATA drives from Fujitsu allow it," he said. "Tape doesn't work for such companies. How do you back up 2 Tbytes of data every day? Where's the backup window?"