Authoritative analysis of Europe’s ICT channels Newsletter Issue 4 February 29th 2008
Distribution on the run in
INSIDE THIS ISSUE...
Denmark after failures
Top five player SMG the latest to file for bankrupcy; ALSO rules out bid
By Alex Brownsell
LEADING Danish distributor SMG has filed for
bankruptcy after losing contracts with several Jay Forbes, President Ingram Micro Europe
15
major vendors. Intel, AMD and Maxtor, among
others, terminated their partnership with SMG
HEADLINE NEWS 1-3
after it sold its Swedish and Norwegian businesses
SMG goes under, HP needs partners
to GNT Group in September 2006. The Microsoft
and Acer disti suspended trading the morning ENTERPRISE NEWS 4-7
of Monday 18 February, with MD Ole Mortensen
(pictured, page 3) sending all staff home. Chairman
ACS buys in Germany, Agresso France
breaks free, Brocade builds in eastern
Mark Keough tells IT Europa he hopes to have a
Europe, Symantec urges partner awareness
new investor on board in the coming weeks.
Keough also reveals there were attempts last
SME & CONSUMER NEWS 8-11
year to sell the company, but a buyer did not
materialise. “SMG Denmark was part of a pan-
ALSO up to #3, Acer claims notebooks
Nordic group, and since [the sale of SMG Sweden
win, Oracle appoints new VADs, Arkoon to
and Norway] it has struggled. We lost many big
VMware CEO Diane Green addressed
acquire, Trend Micro on the road
partners this week at VMworld in
franchises with vendors – we became too small.
NATIONAL SURVEY:
Cannes. Full report in our next issue....
The Denmark businesses needs to be part
3
IRELAND 18-25
EXCLUSIVE SYMANTEC PARTNER NEWS - PAGE 6
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Stop press
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HP - “dramatically Azlan to launch
Dell goes virtual
short of partners” “SMB Activation”
TALKING at VMworld Europe ’08 in Cannes
this week, direct/channel vendor Dell took
EVEN though it added 2,000 sales people world- AZLAN’S new programme, codenamed “SMB the chance to announce that from April the
wide, HP’s CEO Mark Hurd thinks it needs more. Activation”, will relaunch its approach to resellers, company will fully adopt virtualised technology
It also has far fewer partners than it needs, he and also seeks to link them to virtualisation with by applying VMware to all its products.
thinks. In talks to analysts after the latest set of VMware, to databases through Oracle, which Mark Jervis, Dell Chief Marketing Officer, says:
largely encouraging figures, he indicated that HP is moving more in its channels, and unified “We are proud to announce that from April we
did not have enough routes to market. messaging with Cisco, all linked and leading to will put VMware everywhere.”
“We are very under-covered, and we’re very products areas such as virtual datacentres. And he adds: “And we’ll also make it easy to
under-represented in the market, and it’s an issue “We want to establish Azlan as the go–to deploy and buy VMware as people will be able to
for us. It’s frustrating, because obviously we come partner for vendors and resellers in the SMB download it from the Dell website.”
to work everyday, and then under-distribute the sector,” says Uwe Stein, Director Enterprise The vendor, which boasts a six-year long
products in the market. And we’ve got a very Solution Marketing, Azlan Europe. “There’s a lot partnership with VMware, claims that it sells
strong line-up of partners out there.” coming this year.” more VMware products than all its competitors
HP has 144,000 resellers and partners, but, “We want to activate the dormant partners, and believes virtualisation is the key to the future
when going through a detailed market,
3
and get all the channel up-selling and
3
of the IT business. More next issue...
It0804 - front_page.indd 1 27/02/2008 10:53:43
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