Avnet Applied Computing Solutions Enhances Online Storage Configurator with Products from Sony and Xtore

2004-10-28 - Phoenix, AZ, USA: Avnet Applied Computing Solutions, a division of Avnet Inc. (NYSE:AVT) that provides engineering, integration and manufacturing services for the single-purpose computing market, today announced the addition of Sony and Xtore storage products to its Avnet FastBuild Storage Online Configurator. Avnet Applied Computing Solutions' online storage configurator offers original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and solution providers with a way to quickly create and customise storage subsystems online.

Avnet Applied Computing Solutions selected the Sony and Xtore storage products for the online storage configurator to meet the growing market demand for custom white-box direct attached storage (DAS), storage area networks (SAN), network attached storage (NAS), and Internet small computer systems (iSCSI). Avnet Applied Computing Solutions has also exclusively selected Seagate's family of hard drives for the configurator to complete its customers' solutions.

"Avnet Applied Computing Solutions developed the online storage configurator to provide our customers with a way to shorten their design cycle and costs by providing them with pre-validated configurations of storage subsystems," said Michael Gaeta, vice president of storage and display technologies, Avnet Applied Computing Solutions. "The Sony and Xtore lines of storage products will significantly expand the storage solutions offered to our customers through the configurator into the key areas where they are seeing the most demand -- SAN, NAS and iSCSI. Sony and Xtore storage products perfectly complement the solutions available through the configurator because of their industry-leading reliability and performance."

Avnet Applied Computing Solutions' technical and engineering experts have validated that all configurations available through the online storage configurator will work together seamlessly, including the new Sony and Xtore storage products being offered. Customers are able to design and build their storage subsystems based on an error-proof interface that ensures correct configurations. The extensive pre-validation process eliminates misconfigurations which can create significant delays in sales and revenues for solution providers.

Avnet FastBuild Storage Online Configurator users are able to use the system to design and build white-box solutions for the medical, point of sale (PoS) and telecommunications industries. All of the components available through the configurator are industry-recognised and from leading manufacturers. Among those components offered are both desktop and rack-mount storage enclosures, tape drives and tape libraries, supporting a wide variety of technologies including Sony's Advanced Intelligent Tape(TM) (AIT) and SAIT tape formats for inclusion in DAS, NAS, SAN solutions, leveraging SCSI, iSCSI and Fibre Channel configurations.

"The Avnet FastBuild Storage Online Configurator provides us with a valuable resource for helping system builders meet their customers' needs," said Alan Sund, director of marketing for Sony Electronics' tape storage solutions division. "One of the main ways these system builders are able to add value to the solutions they sell is through the integration of our products into a custom system. Avnet Applied Computing Solutions allows them to do this easily and quickly, which is critical in today's market."

"Avnet Applied Computing Solutions enables Xtore to increase our market share with value-oriented storage solutions providers, and their online storage configurator is one example of this," said Paul Snapp, sales manager at Xtore. "Our customers will greatly benefit from being able to build storage solutions they are looking for within minutes, while being assured that the configurations will work together seamlessly since all product combinations available are fully tested and validated."