Acer, the No. 4 PC maker in the US, has released a line of servers and storage products for this market.
The launch marks the company's return, or reinvestment, in the US as a server vendor. Acer sells consumer PCs and related devices under its own name, as well under Gateway, eMachines and Packard Bell brands.
It had previously sold servers in the US, but it let that business diminish over the past few years. The company said it has made a major investment in this market. It said it has expanded its support and service capabilities, and will manufacturer its server products in the US through third party makers.
"I want to make sure that we can we build very, very quickly and deliver much faster than everyone else," said Todd Mottershead, senior manager for servers and storage at Acer.
IDC ranked Acer No. 3 worldwide PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2010, following Hewlett Packard and Dell. In the US, Acer is the fourth largest vendor; HP has 28.6% of the US market, Dell about 22%, Toshiba about 10% and Acer 9%.
Acer has been selling servers outside the US. For its US reintroduction, Acer has released a tower rack, blade system, and systems especially designed for cloud computing, all with a number of configurations, as well as network attached storage products. Prices range from $721 for a tower to $10,499, for storage. Acer will be selling through channel partners.
"These are not cheap servers, and they won't be priced cheaply, but they will be very competitive with the offering from others," Mottershead said.
But one area Acer believes it will be especially competitive will be in "option kits," or additional hard drives, memory, and other components. Mottershead claims that its option pricing will be very aggressive, at 40% below what competitors are charging.
No comments:
Post a Comment