BANGALORE: Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and Acer have announced a joint marketing plan for the Asia-Pacific market - including India - by which Acer will undertake marketing, sales and support for the Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage systems in addition to third party products, as part of a total storage area network (SAN) solution.

Acer joins Hitachi’s TrueNorth™ Channel Partner Program in a three-year agreement for the Asia-Pacific market in the elite tier known as regional Platinum Solutions Partner. Acer will promote the Thunder family of storage systems with Altos servers, through its regional channel partners.

The pact will accelerate Acer’s position in the entry to mid-level SAN market and give Hitachi Data a strong entry into the market that prefers storage-attached PC servers. To start with, the agreement covers India, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

Sam Thomas, asst. GM-Marketing EPG (Enterprise Products Group) of Acer during a telecom said that Acer was looking at $2 million for this financial year in terms of revenue in India. Starting June 2004, similar tie ups’ were launched with Australia, then rolled onto Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia. “Sales in India will be primarily through our channel network, our large partner network primarily concentrates on selling server solutions, and they would be offering the storage solutions too. Promotion activities will primarily be vertical focused and would be direct mailing and other such exercises. Storage is a fairly complex message to get across.

Madison manages Acer's media account while Orchard handles their creatives.