GTSI forms team of storage experts

Federal reseller GTSI Corp. has created a storage solutions technology team to provide expertise in designing, implementing and supporting high-capacity storage solutions, the company announced last week.

GTSI has built eight technology teams in the past three years to focus on specific product areas, such as Sun Microsystems Inc. equipment, Cisco Systems Inc. equipment and information security products, said Jim Dunn, GTSI's vice president for business development and technology solutions.

GTSI decided to create a storage solutions team because storage is the fastest-growing segment of the information technology market, Dunn said.

The government market is interested in storage options because of the move to paperless government, which requires more electronic storage and because there are a lot of new storage technologies, Dunn said. Those advances include storage-area networks, network-attached storage and direct-attached storage solutions.

Dunn said the technology teams are made up of:

Technical business development members who consult with organizations about their needs. Technical specialists who design solutions. Systems engineers who do the implementation. "Customers like groups of people with engineering and design capabilities dedicated to a specific technology," Dunn said. "Customers find they can get as much expertise as if they went directly to the manufacturer, but they work with a contractor who has several government vehicles they can buy off."

GTSI's federal contracts include NASA's Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement II, the National Institutes of Health's Electronic Computer Store II and the General Services Administration schedule.