Acer enters Indian storage market with Linux

Leading PC maker Acer has stepped in to the Indian storage market by
launching Acer Storage Center (ASC), its storage networking infrastru-cture
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 Rs 650 crore and we hope to garner seven percent, which would
amount to roughly between Rs 38 to Rs 40 crore during 2004," said Harish
Kohli, GM, Product Group Sales and Marketing, Acer India Enterprise.

Entering the Indian market by setting up a 100 percent sub-sidiary, 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, intero-perability, advanced
features suited for Enterprise and SMEs, pricing, simplified data migra-tion and
superior performance.

The Taiwan based company expects its storage business to contribute 10
percent of its overall revenue in India.

The company plans to complete the current financial year with revenues in the
range of Rs 350 to Rs400 crore. "We have been doubling our reven-ues and
should be able to con-tinue next year too. Notebooks, servers and desktops sales
would help us keep the momentum of sales in 2004-05 too," added, WS Mukund,
MD, Acer India.

CyberMedia News Service

Bangalore