Synnex To Distribute Maxtor Drives

Under the deal, Fremont, Calif.-based Synnex will carry Maxtor's Atlas SCSI drives for enterprise applications; MaXLine premium ATA and Serial ATA drives for midline and near-line secondary storage enterprise applications; DiamondMax drives for desktop PCs, consumer electronics or emerging market applications; and Maxtor OneTouch external drives.

"We are excited about the opportunities this relationship will provide," John Vossoughi, vice president of Pan American Sales at Milpitas, Calif.-based Maxtor, said in a statement. "Our distribution partnerships continue to play a key role in supporting the needs of both traditional and emerging opportunities for storage. Synnex has growing direct-sales capabilities to regional OEMs and vertical integrators, which will help Maxtor achieve its goal of touching more customers in more markets, more often."

Maxtor was a key addition for Synnex, which is looking to step up its competition with Ingram Micro and Tech Data, said Brian Alexander, vice president of equity research for technology distribution at investment firm Raymond James and Associates.

"We typically do not emphasize line-card additions, but recall that part of the growth story is that Synnex does not have authorization from all of the major suppliers that the larger distributors have," Alexander said in a statement.

"The company's success in receiving authorization from key vendors will obviously provide incremental sales and profit opportunities that are not incorporated into our forecast," he said. "We believe that Maxtor is one of the larger suppliers that Synnex did not have previous authorization to distribute. Cisco [Systems], Sony and many of the security software vendors are other potential vendor adds down the road. "