Storage Vendor GST Resells Bull Unix Servers in the States

Published: March 13, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

GST, a storage vendor located in Southern California with deep knowledge of the IBM iSeries platform that has expanded into selling and supporting storage for Big Blue's pSeries Unix line, has gone one better and is now an authorized reseller of the Escala line of Power-AIX machines from French server maker Bull.

GST sells tape drives, storage arrays, and memory modules that are compatible with the iSeries and pSeries line and are therefore compatible with the Bull Escala server line, since they are all based on the same exact hardware. Bull is a licensee of IBM's Power server hardware and AIX software and was the original creator of the first PowerPC-based SMP servers in the RS/6000 line more than a decade ago. Bull also sells the NovaScale line of Itanium-based machines, which support Linux and Windows as well as Bull's own GCOS mainframe operating system.

Already a reseller of IBM's iSeries, pSeries, and OpenPower servers, it might seem redundant for GST to be adding the Bull Escala product line. But, being a vendor of storage products that compete directly with IBM means GST needs some additional leverage in the market. Now, GST can play off IBM and Bull against each other to get the best deals for its Unix customers on the Unix servers and bundle in its own disk and storage products to boost its own sales.