Acer to upscale PC partners to sell servers, storage

Acer India is gearing up its channel partners, who have largely been selling PCs and notebooks, to start offerings its range of
servers and storage solutions. So far, over 90% of server sale used to happen through the six
tier-1 SI partners that the company works with. However, with server buying having witnessed a spurt last year, the company feels a need to
commoditize it. Hence it is looking at encouraging most of its partners dealing in
commercial desktops to start pushing the same. 

"Of our overall partner base, we expect at least 40% to start selling our range of PC servers by next year. This will help them
as well to scale up their value chain as well as improve their profitability," informs Sam
Oommen Thomas, Asst GM-Marketing, Enterprise Product Group, Acer India. 

Justifying such a strategy, he elaborates that partners selling commercial PCs possess right kind of client base, which is
typically an SME kind of organization, and where investment on PC servers is fast becoming a
standard.

"Until now, our partners have been doing the server business on a back-to-back basis. However, from September onwards,
they would adopt a stock-and-sell model," adds Sam. On storage front, the company has already
identified 20 partners across top six cities and over next two quarters will increase this number to 30. "Our partners can look at easily earning 10%

margins on servers while around 20% on our range of storage solutions," states he.

The company will also be rolling out regular training and certification program for partners dealing in storage. Acer had
recently rolled out its range of storage products under the Altos brand. Header: Creative Zen Touch portable audio player
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