OR Technology And Ingram Micro Enter Distribution Agreement

OR Technology And Ingram Micro Enter Distribution Agreement

OR Technology Inc. this morning announced it has signed an agreement with Ingram Micro Inc. granting the company distribution rights to the a:drive, a 120MB floppy disk drive able to read and write legacy (720KB and 1.44MB) floppy diskettes while offering 80 times the storage capacity and higher transfer rates.

Ingram Micro will distribute the a:drive to its broad customer base of systems integrators, value-added dealers and resellers. The a:drive is targeted at the millions of floppy disk drive users who want greater storage capacity and faster transfer rates yet still need access to their floppies.

"Our primary concern was to select a distributor that could provide immediate and widespread access for our production in the channel market," said John Haughey, president and chief executive officer, OR Technology. "Ingram Micro is an outstanding distribution partner with a track record for establishing emerging products."

"We are excited about this agreement because the a:drive offers greater storage capacity as well as faster access to data stored on floppy disks," said Jenny Ayala, senior director of purchasing for Ingram Micro. "This agreement will provide OR Technology with a solid distribution network to handle anticipated demand while allowing Ingram Micro to add yet another emerging technology to our extensive list of products."

Compared with drives that offer similar storage capacity, the a:drive conforms to the industry standard form factors established for floppy disk drives and was designed for internal use. It offers transfer rates of up to 4MB/sec. when LS-120 media is used.

Laser servo technology was developed by OR Technology, Compaq Computer Corp., Imation Corp. (3M) and Matsushita- Kotobuki Electronics Industries Ltd. (MKE).

The a:drive has a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $210. LS-120 media from Imation is available now at an MSRP of $19.95.

Ingram Micro Inc., with headquarters in Santa Ana, Calif., is the world's largest wholesale distributor of microcomputer and technology products, with 1995 sales of $8.167 billion. Worldwide sales for the first two quarters of 1996 total $5.543 billion. The company's inventory includes 36,000 products from more than 1,000 of the world's leading hardware and software companies. Affiliates in 19 countries sell to over 100,000 resellers in 120 countries.