"Procom did a very good job marketing its products from California ... but we have to have a local presence to support the vast majority of government users" that may want to buy the products, said Matthews. The market "is growing by leaps and bounds" as government agencies and corporations increasingly rely on networked data storage, he said. "We hope to double the revenue from last year" to $8 million, he said.
Procom's chief rivals are Meridian Data Inc., Scotts Valley, Calif., and SMS Data Products Group Inc., McLean, Va.
Henry Seifried, SMS' marketing coordinator, declined to release the company's sales figures, but said SMS has roughly 250 marketing, customer-support and administrative employees in the Washington area.
"Our presence in Washington, D.C., shows our commitment to the government sector and that we are a long-term player in the network storage arena," said a Procom company statement. "About 80 percent of government buyers are located in Washington, D.C., so a local presence will allow us to adequately address this important market segment," said the statement.
Via a network of resellers, Procom has already sold its products to the Executive Office of the White House, the Food and Drug Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, NASA, the Air Force, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the Department of Treasury and the U.S. Postal Service.
Procom's product line includes a variety of storage devices intended for use within computer networks. These devices include cabinet-sized arrays of compact discs and digital video discs, tape-storage systems, and hard-drive upgrades for servers, computer notebooks and desktop computers.
Procom sells to customers in 90 countries and has offices located throughout the United States and in Germany, France, Canada and the Middle East.