Looking to broaden its technology focus into new areas, Sydney-based peripherals distributor, FortuneTec, has signed Taiwanese based network hardware vendor, Synology.

Managing director, Justin Hsu, said it wanted to break away from its core PC business because of the current state of the whitebox market.

"Everyone one knows the [whitebox] PC market is not very good at the moment and we have to concentrate on other areas to offset and compensate for that," he said. "The storage market is becoming a much more serious area. We are moving from a pure PC to a more server-type business."

FortuneTec will distribute the entry range NAS Synology products including the DS 107e and CS 407. They feature privilege management functionality that allows businesses to assign different file access passwords to different users, which, Hsu claimed, was unlike other NAS products where users could only assign one password for everybody.

Hsu said the products were suited to SMBs with up to 100 users.

"As long as they have a server and want to backup their files for security reasons, then that's the customer we are looking at," he said. FortuneTec joins Lako Pacific and Compucon in the distributor line-up.

Hsu said he would be bundling the range with its server peripheral products and identified service integrators and online resellers as key partners. FortuneTec is now looking to recruit another 100 partners.