Keating Technologies jumped into this country’s increasingly competitive data storage market this week, announcing an exclusive agreement to act as the Canadian arm of StorCase Technology, Inc.
Based in Fountain Valley, Calif., StorCase manufactures plug-and-play, fixed and removable storage enclosures, and was looking to increase its Canadian penetration by expanding into Keating’s reseller base, said Peter Ross, Keating’s Markham, Ont.-based marketing manager.
“Keating Technologies is a branch outsourcing service and StorCase has hired us to be its head office in Canada, so we are doing its sales and marketing for them. We will sell the products into the Canadian distributors, and then work with the distributors to sell it to value-added resellers,” Ross said.
Since storage requirements are increasing almost exponentially, and storage has become a major component of any new network installation or upgrade, it seems like a natural time for Keating’s first foray into storage, Ross said.
Data management has definitely moved from solving immediate problems of space, to requiring an enterprise-level strategy, agreed Alan Freedman, research manager for servers and storage at Toronto-based market research firm IDC Canada.
“As enterprise systems become more heterogeneous with the constant addition of new components, interoperability becomes more important. So while big companies like Sun are busy capturing their install base, they are also very diligently developing partnerships,” explained Freedman.
Freedman also noted that there are currently plenty of players in the Canadian storage game, so he expects some consolidations, as the solutions get bigger, and consequently more expensive to supply.
Citing a wide range of potential customers, from large corporations down to small businesses with a few users, Ross noted that in the past, StorCase products have also found a market outside the usual suspects, such as banks, insurance groups and government offices.
“A couple of models are designed for rugged environments, and the single drive cases are actually used on the space shuttle. They have locking cases and thumbscrews, so the military uses them – they put them in tanks, or wherever they need mobile data storage.”
Keating Technologies is at http://www.keating.com/default.htm. StorCase is at http://www.storcase.com/. IDC Canada is at http://www.idc.ca/.
