SCC wins CSC £500m desktop contract

Channel round-up SCC will provide desktop computers and servers to all Computer Science Corporation (CSC) across mainland Europe for the next five years.

The deal is valued at £500m and extends an agreement reached in April 2001 for SCC to provide machines for CSC's UK clients. SCC won the UK gig, valued at the time at £390m over five years, from incumbent supplier Computacenter. It said the contract was the UK's second biggest PC supply deal, presumably behind BT.

Sir Peter Rigby, chairman and CEO of SCC, said in a statement: "We are delighted to extend the geographic range of our contract with one of the world's leading IT Services companies. Our pan-European experience in hardware supply chain management and service delivery make us well suited to this expanded role."

Orange starts channel programme

Mobile operator Orange is setting up a dedicated channel partner programme for the first time. The company believes there is increasing demand for mobile services from business.

The programme promises resellers easy access to Orange kit, training and product and marketing support. Orange is looking for resellers with proven experience, financial stability, a strong customer base, ability to provide customers with technical support and "a clear focus on mobility".

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Ms Office partner programme is one

Microsoft is celebrating the first birthday for its Office System Partner Solutions Program aimed at getting developers making complementary applications for Office. Around 1,500 partners have signed up in Europe. These companies are developing 1,800 applications, accounting for 49 per cent of the worldwide total. Of these, some 400 applications have already been implemented or are ready for customers to license and use.

Finance specialists to merge

CSSG, the Luton-based accountancy software reseller, is buying Kingsword, an Oxford dealer. The new company will trade under the name CSSG from offices and will continue to offer Microsoft's Great Plain, Pegasus and Sage software. According to CSSG, finance and accountancy software resellers are under increasing pressure to follow higher standards which increases overheads for smaller resellers.

Lockie key man for C2000

Steve Lockie has been appointed UK managing director at C2000, the UK arm of Tech Data, filling the gap left by Julian Klein's recent departure. Lockie is being parachuted in from Dubai, where he ran Tech Data's Middle East operations.

He is looking forward to returning to the UK and said: "I am thrilled to be given this opportunity. This is a great challenge for me and one that I am personally relishing." Adnan Al-Falah is taking over as managing director of Tech Data UAE, he was previously sales director for the company.

MRi picks Northamber

Connectivity specialist MRi has signed Northamber to distribute its products in the UK. Northamber will sell the full range of MRi input output adapters and the Serial ATA products to resellers and systems builders.

Unipalm and ActivCard

Unipalm will distribute ActivCard products in Ireland and the UK. ActivCard makes secure remote access products, smart card based IDs and Single Sign-on. Unipalm believes the market for digital identity and authentication products will grow rapidly over the next few years. It believes ActivCard will complement other vendors it represents like Citrix and CheckPoint.

Ingram eccomerce on the up

Ingram Micro Europe is pumping an unspecified amount into improving its ecommerce systems. This will make it better able to deal with growing customer demand. In 2003 Ingram Micro Europe made online sales worth over €2bn and processed over 10 million order lines. Ingram trades with more than 5,000 resellers via its website.

NetSuite gets UK office and Euro VP

NetSuite, makers of Oracle Small Business Suite, is expanding its UK operations and has appointed Dean Mansfield as VP of EMEA. NetSuite has expanded sales to include both direct and channel deals. Mansfield previously ran international sales for Brocade, he has also worked for Plumtree and Network Associates. The new UK office is based on the Oracle campus in Reading. ®