Gulf Importers

Seagate focus on partners

Seagate’s NAS product

Seagate, a world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions, has said investments in its Premier Partner Programme will help it deepen its footprint in the Gulf region.

“Today there really are monumental transformations happening within the region’s storage market as a result of new advancements in the areas such as cloud, flash storage capabilities, and rewritable disk capabilities. Seagate recognises the challenges of technology transitions and the support required in order for its channel partners in the Gulf to step confidently into these digital frontiers,” said Christian Assaf, the company’s senior sales manager for the Middle East and Africa region

“One way that Seagate has done this is through investments in expanding its Seagate Premier Partner Programme. Through the programme, Seagate offers direct benefits which include technical assistance. It also provides support in the form of marketing investments and branding, with top partners getting dedicated Seagate account managers who visit them, train and educate their staff, provide them with free samples, and offer forward-looking roadmaps so that the partners can keep up with the changing business environment.”

Assaf said the top two Seagate products in the Gulf are in the areas of flash technology and business NAS.

“In all its manifestations – whether SSD, PCIe, or flash arrays – flash for the enterprise is really one of the fastest growing segments we see in the market today,  Flash memory is the answer to the rising demand for hard drive performance. By integrating a small amount of flash into a hard drive, users get many of the performance benefits of flash technology without the added cost.  This is seen in products like solid state hybrid drives. Seagate is actually shipping its third-generation of hybrid drives as users look for blazing-fast performance and high-capacity at an affordable price.”

Assaf: shipping third-generation hybrid drives

Assaf: shipping third-generation hybrid drives

About business NAS, Assaf noted that how well a company manages and protects its digital assets can go a long way towards determining its success or failure.

“Given the limited budgets that most local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are challenged with, setting up a robust IT infrastructure that supports and protects a company’s data is often an uphill task. But there is a solution that makes sense, and it is called network-attached storage.

“NAS devices are able to save and share data for multiple computers, whether they are Macs or PCs, allowing users to access that data whether they are sitting in the same room with the network or securely when they are on the go, over the Internet, “ he said.

As well as offering the industry’s broadest portfolio of hard disk drives, solid-state drives and solid-state hybrid drives, Seagate offers an extensive line of retail storage products for consumers and small businesses, along with data-recovery services for any brand of hard drive and digital media type.

New products the company introduced included further expansions on Seagate’s surveillance portfolio. It released its seventh generation of Surveillance HDD drives as well as founding a Video Surveillance Systems Solution Centre to help customers identify which technologies will best support their security system needs.

On the consumer front, Seagate has released a string of products set to define the next era of personal storage. That lineup has featured the world’s first portable 4TB storage device – the Backup Plus FAST – which doubles the fastest download/upload speeds of other hard drives.

Allowing small and medium-sized businesses to securely access data whether at the office or on the go, Seagate’s upcoming NAS and NAS Pro products are also set to appear in the Gulf this fall. These compact private cloud solutions are ideal for businesses with up to 50 employees who require scalable storage systems but do not want to shoulder the full costs of setting up their own IT data centre.