Microtronica in Super deal
Supermicro continues European expansion with Microtronica distribution deal
Microtronica has been chosen by US server and system board manufacturer Supermicro to distribute its entire product range to UK system builders and resellers.
The deal marks another phase in Supermicro's European expansion, which began in 2002 with a pan-European distribution deal with Computer 2000.
Originally billed as a 'Dell-buster', the arrival of Supermicro meant UK resellers and system builders had access to 'bare bones' servers, system boards, chassis and accessories from one of Intel's closest hardware partners.
The new alliance builds on an existing US relationship with Microtronica's parent company, Arrow Electronics, and adds greatly to Microtronica's burgeoning server offerings.
The distributor was chosen by Intel as its first UK server value-added distributor in October last year, combining the sale of server chips and components with the ability to configure and build complete servers.
"Supermicro is a big player worldwide and is quite big in the UK, but it wants to increase its share in the UK market even further," said Les Billing, managing director of Microtronica.
"With its focus on Intel offerings Supermicro needed a big Intel distributor, and Microtronica is the biggest.
"We were getting a lot of requests from customers to extend the relationship Supermicro has with Arrow in the US to the UK."
Since the second half of 2003, Microtronica has embarked on an ambitious campaign to become a one-stop shop for server offerings.
According to recent IDC figures, the server arena is one of the strongest PC-based markets to be in.
Shipments of PC-based servers grew by more than 23 per cent in the third quarter of 2003, with most of the growth in the SME sector, but the corporate sector is also starting to spend again.
"We are beginning to see green shoots in the industry," said Thomas Meyer, director of IDC's Server Group.
"Some industry sectors, such as telecommunications and finance, which have been quiet in recent times, are beginning to come back."