Nishan reaches out with Acal FCS

IP storage networking vendor appoints Acal as its European distributor

IP storage networking vendor Nishan Systems has appointed Acal Fibre Channel Solutions (FCS) to be its European distributor.

Nishan, which sells solely through the channel in the UK, said one reason it had chosen Acal FCS was because of its strong relationship with EMC and StorageTek, which are among its key customers.

Simon Gordon, business development director at Nishan, said Acal FCS would help with technical support and sales training.

"It's hard for us to be everywhere at once, so Acal FCS helps us to get through [to customers] much more effectively. We couldn't get to every reseller we need to without a company like Acal," he said.

According to Stuart Bridger, chief technical officer at Acal FCS, the distributor will give resellers technical support. It is initially working with 10 to 15 resellers on Nishan's IP switch products, but intends to extend this further.

Both networking and storage resellers had expressed an interest in the switches, Bridger said. "We are getting a lot of interest from the IP infrastructure players as well as storage resellers," he said.

Bridger added that the switches are likely to be used for geographical SAN connection and disaster recovery first.

Tom Clark, director of technical marketing at Nishan, said that IP has many benefits.

"IP is much cheaper from a customer point of view," he said. "It is very flexible in terms of spanning distance. Companies have the staff, the management tools and all the things that have evolved around IP."