One of the 13 authorized resellers of e3000 hardware in the US has spread its wings, as Technical Scientific and Application, Inc. (TSA) merged with authorized reseller Macro Solutions Inc. TSA will be operating the Metarie, La.-based Macro as TSA-New Orleans, to serve existing and new e3000 customers in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. While Macro was one of just four authorized outlets in the Southeastern US, it’s those sales away from the US Gulf Coast that TSA is working on for new business. “Hundreds of Texas companies using the HP 3000 will now have access to sales and support services close to home,” said TSA president William C. Smith. The company has operated as a reseller of new HP equipment from HP’s palmtops to the Superdome servers, and it’s also been a resource for used equipment on the HP 9000 line, especially workstations. But TSA has never been in the brokered HP 3000 business during its 15 years of HP equipment experience. The company has a 90,000-square-foot headquarters and showroom in West Houston and employs more than 50 people, including factory trained techs who are getting certified on the newest e3000 line of A- and N-Class servers. The technicians have been working with the HP 9000 versions of those systems for some time. It’s also an HP OpenView Gold Channel Partner.

Bob Reynolds, the founder of Macro, remains with the organization and has been named General Manager for TSA-New Orleans. “Becoming part of TSA assures our clients of financial stability with a company that has more than 15 years of experience with HP products,” Reynolds said, “and has a very strong relationship with Hewlett-Packard.” TSA calls itself the leading remarketer of Hewlett-Packard computer equipment and peripherals in the US, but its latest business acquisition adds new HP e3000 systems to its broad mix, now offered across a wider territory than Macro was handling. The HP 3000 line was the only part of HP’s system offerings that TSA was not authorized to sell new. As part of the acquisition, TSA has moved the Macro staff into a building shared by Hewlett-Packard offices.

“They will be upgrading existing 3000 installations,” said director of marketing Mike Goldberg.“Our territory is the whole Southeastern US, from Oklahoma to Virginia and Florida. By phone we covered all those places, but we never had anyone on the ground. The fit with Macro Solutions is that there are two people over there who have an office in New Orleans and cover Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and some of Tennessee. It expands our reach in terms of serving customers, and being able to do an install, or go sit down and talk to customers. When you start talking about solutions, networks and storage management, it’s a face to face deal. You don’t do that over the phone. We think it’s potentially a very good source of business for us.”