C2000 gears up for Microsoft sales binge

Channel round-up Computer 2000, Tech Data's UK subsidiary, is gearing up for a flurry of activity around renewing Microsoft Software Assurance contracts. These were introduced two years ago and many come up for renewal between now and July.

C2000 will provide detailed customer information to the resellers who sold the original contracts. Resellers will get an alert that a customer will 'need' to renew licenses in the next few weeks. The service is provided through C2000's Licensing On Line.

Richard Hales, general manager of software at C2000, said: "The value of being alerted to the fact that an existing customer will need a renewal within a few weeks is very obvious and one that will become all the more apparent to many more resellers during this busy period. We’re expecting activity levels to almost double towards the end of next few months."

Component distie VIP Computer Centre has been appointed an associate distributor by motherboard maker ASUS. VIP will initially offer motherboards, followed by graphics cards, wireless products and barebone PCs. It hopes to distribute the whole ASUS range during the course of 2004.

Networking distributor Westcon has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering or share offering. Lehman Brothers is leading the deal with Merrill Lynch, SG Cowen and Robert W Baird acting as co-managers.

Westcon includes Comstor, Voda One and Westcon divisions. Comstor, which sells mainly Cisco kit, accounted for 61 per cent of turnover. The company was due to float in December 2001 but was pulled at last minute because of dodgy market conditions. Westcon is currently owned by South African reseller Datatec. The money raised by the float will partly go to paying back debt to the parent company and partly to fund a war chest for acquisitions.

Fayrewood, the storage and networking distie, increased turnover 14 per cent to £434m and pre-tax profit by 68 per cent to £12.8m for the year ended December 31 2003.

Turnover at ICM fell six per cent on lower revenues from its solutions business. Turnover was £36.3m, down from £38.6m for the same period last year. Underlying operating profit was up 4 per cent to £2.4m for the year ended 31 December 2003. The good news is growth in IT support and business continuity business. Those two divisions already have £22.4m of confirmed orders for the second half of the current financial year.

Bell Microproducts Europe is to distribute Intransa products across Europe. Bell Micro staff will sell, and support Intransa iSCSI and IP SAN products.

Azlan is distributing Packeteer products in France, Germany and the UK. Packeteer offers 'application traffic management' software. The networking disties has picked up nine regional European awards from Cisco. Azlan won Cisco 2004 Distribution Partner for Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Portugal and Spain. Tech Data, Azlan's parent company, won in Sweden. Azlan also won Cisco 2004 Distribution Partner of the year for Central and Eastern Europe. ®