Ian Deane (IDS)
Specialist networking and storage distributor Independent Data Solutions (IDS) has snagged significant projects in the past few months, triggering growth and a wave of new investment.
IDS was founded in 2004 and carries a select range of specialist networking and storage vendors such as Smartoptics, Versa, Komprise, Quantum and StorCentric. They are also recognised as the only third party transceiver provider certified by Cisco and Brocade.
Besides distribution, IDS also helps its resellers on the groundwork within customer projects and has been bagging significant contract wins with large federal government agencies and most recently with one of the four major banks in Sydney. Some of its reseller relationships include NTT, Data#3, Datacom and Fujitsu.
These projects involved using Norwegian-based open optical networking vendor Smartoptics in implementing open 100GB to 400GB optical line systems, replacing traditional solutions from Cisco, IBM, Telstra and ADVA.
Within these types of projects, IDS director of sales Ian Deane said most customers had expensive and complex legacy technology consisting of telco size equipment, requiring extensive management and support along with high associated costs.
“Most of the hard work is carried out in the design and configuration stage using IDS expertise and with zero-touch self-tuning technology, even the multi-million dollar projects require minimal external assistance and can be implemented by the end-users,” Deane said. “We do offer implementation and consultative support as well as a comprehensive test and verification service.”
With the raft of project wins, IDS has started modernising its operations with new CRM and ERP systems. It is also investing in its marketing and sales posture.
“It’s been a good boost for us. We have a lot of customers, especially in the federal government space and we got to a point where we can make major investments in staff and technology, and hopefully grow a lot faster than we have before,” Deane said.
“We are also bringing to market new, innovative and cost-saving solutions for end-users in the networking and storage management space.”
Like a well kept secret, CTO Iain Ashley added IDS was still a fairly unknown entity in the market, despite running some of the most critical networks in the country.
“Our key markets are the federal government agencies, large enterprises and companies that want to achieve better bandwidth between data centres,” he said.
“Due to COVID, bandwidth requirements have grown and to an extent, so has fibre with communication being king. Fortunately, that’s where we sit in creating greater bandwidth at less cost, and a much easier management pathway.
“We cater to small and large deals right across the spectrum and we have solutions that can span from cabinets to multi-site, multi-metro networking and storage projects.”
Resellers are also reaping benefits from training, education, lead generation, deal registration and attractive rebates on the table.
“Our experience in data storage and data movement are fairly extensive. Networking and compute skills that are out in the market are very well serviced, but the niche parts - such as the storage space, distance and optical networking - are much harder to find,” he said.
“This is where we’ve concentrated our skills in the market along with the very carefully curated set of products that we carry. The knowledge which we love to share is probably the most valuable asset that we have."
Ashley explained that some system integrators might have trouble finding the skill sets required to do some of these optical networking or storage movement projects, which is where IDS can step up to offer its services in these areas.
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“We look after the harder problems that common vendors don’t have good solutions to solve,” he said.
“A lot of users think this type of optical networking technology is very expensive and complicated, but our main vendor, Smartoptics, has been innovating in this space since 2006, and want to try to re-educate the market.”
Recently Smartoptics posted strong results in its first quarter as a publicly listed company trading on Euronext Growth Oslo with recognised revenue growing 62 per cent year-on-year to US$12.4 million and operating profit lifting up to US$1 million.
Smartoptics CEO Magnus Grenfeldt said the ever-growing demand for bandwidth and its open networking solutions approach, places the vendor in “a perfect position to compete with the giants of the industry.”
Smartoptics’ customer base includes thousands of enterprises, governments, cloud providers, Internet exchanges as well as cable and telecom operators in the US, Europe, and APAC.
