JNI adds four distributors in Europe for storage network products
The new distributors are ELD in Germany, Four Leaf in Denmark, IDEAL Hardware in the United Kingdom, and Infodip in France. Along with ACAL Fibre Channel Solutions, JNI authorized distributors serve more than 200 resellers in the European market.
JNI is the leading Fibre Channel HBA vendor in sales through distributors. In 2000, JNI's HBA distribution sales were more than twice the size of its next biggest competitor, Emulex, and more than 10 times the size of QLogic, according to financial statements and public documents filed by the respective HBA manufacturers.
"These major distributors give us the ability to deeply penetrate the fast-growing European market," said Neal Waddington, President and CEO of JNI. "Our European distribution accounted for more than 20% of JNI's revenue in 2000, with sales focused on the Solaris-EMC enterprise market. Our new distributors will expand our non-Solaris sales of products through its network of resellers."
"JNI expertise in manufacturing high quality products for mission critical applications is important for our resellers, who develop demanding storage network environments for their customers," said Andreas Schwartz, Sales and Marketing Director, ELD. "JNI's 24x7x365 support assures live technical support will be available to us on European working hours, not just during North American business operations."
"JNI offers enterprise-quality products and multiple operating system support that is important for expanding our broad range of storage products," said Jørgen Winther, CEO of Four Leaf Technologies A/S. "Our resellers now have more options for configuring systems, and will find JNI's product line comprehensive enough to meet any demanding storage network environment."
"We are delighted to have been chosen as a distributor for JNI's Fibre Channel host bus adaptors, " said Fergus Campbell, product development manager for storage area networks at IDEAL Hardware. "The Fibre Channel market is showing unparalleled growth across Europe and demand for high-quality, cost-effective solutions has grown with it. Our partnership approach with key resellers will ensure the successful penetration of the market by JNI. We look forward to replicating the relationship JNI already has with our parent company, Bell Microproducts."
"JNI's global support and easy-to-use EZ Fibre configuration utility software enables Infodip and its resellers to easily configure storage networks using JNI products," said Veronique Derlot, Director of Marketing, Infodip. "JNI's quality and market position enables us to offer our customers more options when configuring their storage networks."
JNI's new distributors will cover most of the European market. These include:
- ELD Datentechnik GmbH of Stuttgart, Germany, will cover Germany, Austria and Switzerland. ELD has more than 20 years of information technology distribution success to date. ELD is part of the Löffelhardt Group -- founded in 1906 -- one of the oldest and most successful distribution companies in Germany.
- Four Leaf Technologies A/S of Viby, Denmark, will cover the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Four Leaf Technologies is a leading distributor of data storage solutions in the Nordic region. The distributor is 100% employee-owned and has been in the market since 1986, with operations in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
- IDEAL Hardware of Surrey, London, England, covers the United Kingdom for JNI. Ideal is the UK subsidiary of Bell Microproducts Inc., the world's largest data storage distributor. With an extensive range of data storage, systems, software and services, Ideal aims to transform a company's supply chain and move business into the fastest growing and most profitable area of computing in today's market.
- Infodip of Gennevilliers, France, will cover France for JNI. Infodip is one of the leading distributors of storage network products in France.
ELD Datentechnik GmbH has 20 years of success in information technology distribution. This record is an expression of a successful connection of past and future, tradition and innovation. ELD Datentechnik is backed by Löffelhardt Group -- founded in 1906 -- one of the oldest and most successful distribution companies in Germany. The company has decades of experience; its continuous orientation to tomorrow has been a major influence on the company's thinking and behavior. ELD's business philosophy to professionally fulfil the high quality demands of its customers: Yesterday, today and tomorrow.
About Four Leaf
Four Leaf aims to be one of the leading distributors of data storage in Europe working closely with the best suppliers of hardware and software in the world, i.e. IBM, Compaq, Computer Associates, Veritas, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Adic, StorageTek, and Tivoli. Since the beginning, the company has focused on efficient distribution of high-quality storage products and storage know-how. The company continues to increase sales by selling storage solutions to small companies as well as multinationals, with the distribution carried out through resellers only. Four Leaf's 100 employees in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, focus on high-quality products, advanced know-how and a highly developed reseller network. More information about Four Leaf is available at www.4lt.com.
About IDEAL Hardware
Ideal Hardware Limited (www.ideal.co.uk), the wholly-owned subsidiary of U.S.-based Bell Microproducts Inc., is a leading U.K.-based value-added, storage-centric distributor focusing on the high end of the storage market. Ideal is also a leading distributor of Compaq servers, PCs and storage products and is one of only 12 Compaq distributors worldwide to be awarded the prestigious CIP accreditation for high-end products. Ideal has strategic relationships with approximately 80 suppliers of enterprise storage, computer systems, software and media products. These strategic products are packaged with Ideal's value-added programs and services to provide complete NAS, SAS and SAN solutions.
About Infodip
Since 1986 Infodip has been a distributor of peripheral products with a focus on storage. Its activity centers mainly around storage products including hard disc storage (disc, RAID), backup solutions, optical storage (CD/DVD-ROM drives and recorders, CD-DVD and MO libraries), SAN solutions and NAS and NAD solutions. For the 1999-2000 fiscal year, revenue reached 120 million French francs. Infodip is committed to offering its customers cutting-edge technologies. Infodip was the very first distributor in France to sell CD-ROM recorders, RAID boxes and Fibre Channel drives. Infodip customers include Axis Communication, Chaparral, IBM, JNI, Mylex, N'Stor, Overland, Panasonic, Pioneer, Plasmon, Raidtec, Seagate Technology, Sony, Vixel and Western Digital.
About JNI Corporation
JNI Corporation is one of the leading manufacturers of enterprise-level storage area network (SAN) products and the leading provider of Fibre Channel-based host bus adapters (HBAs) for Solaris servers. JNI offers a broad line of FibreStar HBAs, Emerald ASICs, and DriverSuite and EZ Fibre software for storage area networks. JNI's PCI products operate on Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows NT, HP-UX, AIX, Novell, Linux and Mac OS systems. JNI's SBus products run on Solaris. Customers include Amdahl, Avid, Chaparral, Compaq StorageWorks, Consan, EMC, Eurologic, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, LSI Logic, McData, StorageTek and Sun Microsystems. Company headquarters are in San Diego, with offices throughout the U.S. and Munich (München), Germany. www.jni.com.