Synnex Authorized To Sell HP Enterprise StorageWorks

Synnex currently sells lower-end HP storage products and now can carry the StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array EVA product line and the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Systems Library E-Series tape libraries.

"HP has been a long time coming in the Synnex world. We've been requesting this for two years plus," Paget said.

The products are sold through a closed distribution model that requires HP certification, according to Synnex.

Synnex will look to build the business from scratch with solution providers not currently selling HP enterprise storage, Paget said.

"That's fine with us. The business plan we put together is incremental. We will use BSA to prospect leads and we feel very confident we can bring new dollars to HP and Synnex. There are a number of [solution providers] that do not carry HP storage now," he said.

Synnex is close to adding Milpitas, Calif.-based Quantum enterprise storage products, but the deal is not finalized, Paget said.

"Quantum is another vendor we have carried for some time, but not at the enterprise level. We will take that product line into new opportunities," Paget said. "If you step back and look at what we've done, we said we would go to market in three specific areas: storage, networking and security. We still have more work to do in storage, but this gives us two solid enterprise storage players. We will make a couple more plays in the storage market."

The distributor, known for its limited vendor card compared to Ingram Micro and Tech Data, plans to add more security and networking vendors too, Paget said.

"As far as security, we have a lot of good software SKUs, we do a big business with TrendMicro in both commercial and retail and we have a large [Computer Associates International] business as well. We need to add to our security business as well," Paget said. "Networking is the area we are furthest behind. We have 3Com, Nortel and a CTI business."

Synnex also intends to pursue authorizations to sell more enterprise servers, including Unix servers, Paget said.

"Absolutely we are pursuing the server side. But when you take a look at what is available, it's not as critical to our success. You can take the IBM xSeries product up to 16 way and we have their Open Power Linux [products]. We are working on integrated solutions to take to the marketplace. For example, we have a large business in the Intel cluster world."

Last year, Synnex helped solution provider California Digital build the world's second-fastest supercomputer, using more than 4,000 Itanium 2 processors for a 20-teraflop solution.

"We still do a lot of that business. You can take a $350,000 Intel cluster and compete extremely well against higher-end Unix products," Paget said. "You have to understand connectivity, high-availability and a mission critical, engineering compute environment. We have spent a lot of time doing that."