Hammer Distribution drives ahead with Western Digital signing
Deal will see Hammer distributing full range of vendor's hard drives across Europe
Storage distributor Hammer has signed a distribution agreement with hard drive vendor Western Digital (WD) to push its entire range of drives across Europe.
Hammer, which recently expanded its operations into Sweden (CRN, 9 June), will distribute WD’s full range of enterprise, desktop, external, mobile and consumer electronics hard drives.
WD already has distribution agreements with Ideal Hardware, Computer 2000, Ingram Micro, eSys, Micro Peripherals and CMS Peripherals in the UK.
Paul Matravers, director of sales for storage products at Hammer, told CRN the agreement will allow the distributor to grow its customer base.
“We work in vertical markets and will bring customers to WD,” he said. “We are known very much as a Seagate house, but we can’t go to market with just one offering and this will help support the growth of our business.”
Hammer told CRN that it will focus much of its distribution attention on WD’s Raptor, WD RE2 and WD RE Serial ATA (SATA)-based drives, and target enterprise industrial markets, such as the CCTV and medical sectors.
Astley Gayle, product manager for UK and Ireland at rival WD distributor CMS Peripherals, said: “My natural reaction would be that either WD feels it’s under-distributed in the UK, or that it could be looking to exit one of its existing distribution relationships. However, the announcement does not worry us because both Hammer and ourselves work in different spaces for WD.”
The announcement comes just one month after Hammer signed an agreement with SATA vendor AMCC’s storage division to distribute its 3ware range of SATA 2 Raid controllers across the UK and Europe.
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