Acer enters Indian storage mkt with Linux

BANGALORE: Leading PC maker, Acer has stepped in to the Indian storage market by launching Acer Storage Center (ASC), its storage networking infrastructure solution. Introduced last year globally, ASC is targeted at small and medium enterprises to large enterprises with the entry-level storage solution starting off from Rs10 lakh and runs on Linux.

"According to Gartner, the Indian storage market size is projected to be in the range of Rs650 crore and we hope to garner 7 per cent, which would amount to roughly between Rs38 to Rs40 crore during 2004," said, Harish Kohli, General Manager-Sales and Marketing, Enterprise Product Group, Acer India.

Entering the Indian market by setting up a 100 per cent subsidiary, Acer expects the server demand in the country to push its storage solutions sales. According to IDC, it currently holds the third position in server sales in India and hopes to break in to the second position, overtaking IBM and close in the gap of the current leader-HP.

The $12.9 billion banks on seven key features as its USP over its competitors. Modular architecture, flexibility, interoperability, advanced features suited for Enterprise and SMEs, pricing, simplified data migration and superior performance.

The Taiwan based company expects its storage business to contribute 10 per cent of its overall revenue in India. The company plans to complete the current financial year with revenues in the range of Rs350 to Rs400 crore. "We have been doubling our revenues and should be able to continue next year too. Notebooks, servers and desktops sales would help us keep the momentum of sales in 2004-05 too," added, WS Mukund, Managing Director, Acer India.

CIOL Bureau