PRESS RELEASE
24 May, 2006
Qualcom & IBM Sign Partnership Agreement to Target Fast Growing Irish Data Storage Market
- Irish data storage market was valued by IDC at EUR135M in 2004
Qualcom Systems, Ireland’s leading independent IT and data management company, today, announced that it has signed an agreement to resell the IBM portfolio of data management and storage solutions. This announcement signals a drive by Qualcom and IBM to jointly target the fast growing storage market, which IDC estimated to have grown by 18% worldwide in 20051. IDC valued the Irish market at EUR135M in 20042.
IBM employs 3,700 people in Ireland and is the official web partner of the Ryder Cup 2006. Its storage range includes storage area networks (SANs), network attached storage (NAS), disk systems, tape systems and storage software. Qualcom will integrate the IBM solutions alongside its existing range of vendors including HP, Microsoft, Citrix, VMWare and Symantec.
The selection of IBM was prompted by research that Qualcom conducted among its customer base. This showed that Irish businesses are facing huge data storage issues, but with tighter budgets, they are forced to do more with less. They need to retain and manage data for compliance to security and data protection legislation. They need to provide better customer service, more productivity and achieve a lower cost of ownership.
Ken Breen, Qualcom’s managing director commented, “In our search for a storage solution that would meet our complex client needs, we undertook an extensive search of leading vendors. We chose IBM on the basis of its proven storage solutions, its leading market position as well as its support infrastructure and depth of knowledge.”
Qualcom will initially target the IBM storage solution set at the enterprise market and organisations with in excess of one hundred computer users. In this segment, companies are faced with unbalanced data loads across diverse servers. Applications, including email in particular, are placing huge stresses on existing storage. This creates problems with retrieving data quickly and ultimately is the source of the customer service and productivity challenges.
Qualcom’s Ken Breen said, “Make no mistake about it, in the enterprise sector, there is a strong correlation between a company’s storage environment and the performance of its business. One of the keys to turning the information challenge into competitive advantage, is to employ an end-to-end storage management strategy and IBM is one of the few vendors with the breadth of software and hardware to meet this need.”
Peter O'Neill, Sales Director, IBM Ireland, commented, “Our record speak for itself - with growth of 47 percent worldwide, IBM outpaced other market leaders in the external disk storage market. This growth is driven by our excellent proposition, and also relationships with customer focused partners such as Qualcom. With Qualcom’s leading pedigree in mission critical business applications and responsive service, we feel that we have a partner which can drive strong growth for us in the Irish storage market.”
- Ends -
1. Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker Q4 2005.
2. Source: IDC Ireland
About Qualcom Systems Ltd.
Qualcom Systems provides IT and data management products and services to on-demand business environments. It was founded in 1995 and has grown into one of Ireland’s leading ICT providers. The company has support centres nationwide and is committed to delivering products and solutions from the industry leading vendors. All third party systems are backed up by outstanding in-house services and technical expertise. Qualcom places a core focus on quality customer service and reinforces the abilities of its people through constant training and technical certification. Independent research shows that Qualcom provides a speed of response and level of ownership that is unmatched in the industry. For more information see
www.qualcom.ie.
About IBM Ireland
IBM celebrates its 50th anniversary in Ireland in 2006. It now employs over 3,200 people in several operations around Dublin, in manufacturing, eProcurement, sales and marketing, software development, consultancy, services and customer support and treasury operations.
Press Contact:
Eimear Kennedy
Comit Marketing
Tel 01 498 4640
email ekennedy@comitmarketing.com
