Disaster Management, Storage, Slovenia, CEE: Slovenia’s Masterline has agreed to distribute PacketLight Networks productions and solutions for storage and disaster recovery. Michael Schwartz learnt more from PacketLight CEO Coby Hanoch, and asked him for his views on Slovenia as a place to trade.

PacketLight Networks provides storage extension connectivity solutions and is currently expanding its sales coverage in Central and Eastern Europe. One example of this is the recent signing of a strategic partnership with the Slovenian distributor Masterline. Masterline will distribute PacketLight’s storage extension solutions for CDWM, DWDM, SDH and IP networks. Such products enable carriers and enterprises to deploy disaster recovery and business continuity applications for what the two companies describe as lower investment and operational costs.

In addition to meeting the criteria of a rapidly expanding market such as Slovenia, companies are under pressure to meet new regulatory compliances (SOX 404, BASEL II and HIPPA are examples). Any strategy for this difficult environment requires highly accurate planning.

PacketLight itself has been active in Slovenia since February this year. Coby Hanoch outlines his company’s strategy: “Eastern Europe is evolving fast but Slovenia is a good place to do business. She is really western. She is a small market - but that is one of our challenges. We are working with Masterline and we are happy to do so, as Masterline has introduced us to a small number of strategic customers. We now have a foot in the door. This has been most helpful for us. It is better to find one good distributor rather than several with less knowledge of other target markets.”

Coby Hanoch’s more general view of Slovenia is upbeat: “As far as problems are concerned, there is nothing I can find. I really like this country. People can get to the point very quickly; there is no need to be very formal. Slovenia is a good combination of east and west. Even Slovenia’s geographical location is advantageous: “We have noticed some companies operating in Slovenia but with headquarters in Austria. This has led to us speaking to some Slovenian distributors who have Austrian headquarters.”

Looking to the future, Coby Hanoch is optimistic: “Slovenia is expanding fast. As she evolves she will look forward to establishing and operating new types of telecoms services. In some cases this has meant her working with the greatest telecoms and IT players, companies such as IBM.”

* Masterline, a Slovenian limited liability company based in Ljubljana was established in 1991. Its main customers are operators, network service providers and financial institutions, not just in Slovenia but also in neighbouring countries.

more info: www.packetlight.com www.masterline.si