Hammer armed with raid on scalable storage

External Raid storage aimed at SMEs.

Distributor Hammer has released a bundle of external Raid storage products in an attempt to satisfy SME demand for scalable storage products that can connect at high speeds.

As well as putting together Raid hardware and controller components from American Megatrends International (AMI) into a chassis that will be supplied by JMR, Hammer is offering resellers SME-tailored offerings from its new services division, V2 Onsite.

Jason Beeson, Hammer product specialist, said the Raid cluster kits offer fibre-to-fibre and fibre-to-SCSI connections that are increasingly in demand among end-users.

However, Beeson said resellers had been disappointingly slow to fulfil the demand.

"Everyone from the mid-range downwards is looking for better performance. Companies involved in images especially, such as those in video and pre-press, are looking for a fast and easily managed storage medium. An external Raid system is a good compromise for those people who cannot afford Sans," he said.

"We need to get more resellers on board, but they have found it hard to compete with the likes of Compaq and Dell."

AMI is also believed to be in talks with Microtronica over a similar distribution deal.

Les Billings, managing director of Microtronica, said: "External Raid is definitely something we want to get into."