The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Insight scoops up Software Spectrum for $287m

What took Level 3 so long?

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Insight Enterprises, the very big US reseller, is to buy its smaller rival Software Spectrum for $287m.

The surprise here is just how long the owner, web backbone provider Level 3, held on to its subsidiary. In 2002, Level 3 bought Software Spectrum and Corporate Software, one of the first big resellers, and merged them into each other.

At the time it spouted a lot of nonsense about convergence, although we wondered what broadband and software distribution had in common. Conveniently, the purchase bulked up Level 3 sales and enabled it to avoid breaking banking covenants.

So we guess that this divestment marks the official divergence of communications and flogging commodity software to corporates.

Press release here. ®

Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider

More from The Register

Thanks, NSA: Amazon sales of Orwell's 1984 rise 9,500%
Citizens of Oceania bone up on the new reality
 breaking news
BBC lied to Parliament about doomed £100m IT monster, thunder MPs
Axed DMI ballooned and burst while watchdogs sang Kumbaya
Microsoft to open Windows Stores inside 600 Best Buy locations
Product showcases 'must be seen to be believed'
 breaking news
Author Iain (M) Banks falls to cancer at 59
Misses the release of his final work
 breaking news
What did the Lehman Brothers implosion look like to a techie?
Insider tells all about the Gnab Gib at Lehmans
It's official: 'tweet' an English word – not just in the avian sense
If the Oxford English Dictionary says it is so, then it is so
 breaking news
The only Waze is Google: Ad giant tipped to gobble map app 'for $1.3bn'
Pac-Man-satnav-ish upstart in bidding war with Apple, Facebook
 breaking news
1-in-10 e-tomes 'are self-published'... most are 'rubbish' says book ed
Publishing man scoffs at go-it-alone writers, ursines still fouling in forests
 breaking news