AustStor to rename and maintain MO drive

Storage hardware distributor AustStor will undergo a name change, and expand into regional New South Wales, as part of its continued focus on pushing the benefits of magneto optical tape drives to Australian users.

AustStor will soon launch a Web site at www.austor.com.au to celebrate its rebranding as Austor Data Storage or ADS for short.

The newly monikered company will also open up an office on the central coast of NSW, after having secured development funding from both the NSW and Federal Governments. "We see more opportunities opening up in these areas - the Gosford area and the Illawarra area," said Lachlan MacDonald, managing director of AustStor. "This is where the larger guys are not in situ."

AustStor is the distributor of Plasmon's magneto optical, RAID and other tape-based storage hardware. AustStor has also recently signed a distribution agreement for Australia and New Zealand with Xendata, a spin-off of Plasmon. Xendata has developed a software-based archiving solution called Archiving Series for use with network attached file servers and tape libraries, with system capacities ranging from 50 gigabytes to 60 terabytes.

Mr MacDonald said that due to the advent of open systems in storage, devices had become commoditised, which meant his company put its emphasis on support and integration services.

"What's happening is that we are moving back into a niche market," said Mr MacDonald. He said that the company started off selling storage as support for image capture projects, but had expanded to become a generic storage device reseller. "There is now a growing demand for archival solutions. We're being dragged back, quite happily, into that area."