When in Rome….open an Aruba office
Aruba Networks has strengthened its European operation, opening an office in Rome, Italy. The wireless LAN and secure unified mobility solutions vendor now has EMEA field offices in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The new office in Rome will be dedicated to business development activities throughout Italy.
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Kevin Alcock, chief executive at London-quoted UK-based integrator and IT services provider Morse, is leaving the company with immediate effect. Kevin Loosemore becomes executive chairman at the company. The news of Alcock’s departure was contained in a trading update from Morse, which revealed that sales for the year ending June 2008 would be marginally down compared to last year’s sales figure of US$507.8m.
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Maxdata insolvency proceedings begin
Insolvency proceedings have commenced for European hardware player Maxdata. The company filed for insolvency at the end of June 2008 in Essen, Germany. The local court has appointed Dr. Winfrid Andres as preliminary insolvency administrator and one of his first acts has been to transfer all UK sales and services operations to Maxdata’s Benelux subsidiary.
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Avnet has bolstered its position in the UK market and boosted its presence in Ireland after completing the acquisition of value-added distributor Horizon Technology for US$156.1m. The transaction is expected to be accretive to earnings by approximately US$0.10 per share in the 2009 financial year, excluding integration charges.
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Consolidation is reshaping the Dutch distribution channel, with Copaco announcing an agreement to take over retail-focused distributor McDOS. The deal, which is subject to approval by the Netherlands Competition Authority, strengthens Copaco’s position in the retail channel in the Benelux and France and also adds a number of new vendors to the distributor’s portfolio.
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European hardware player Maxdata AG has hit the wall and filed for insolvency proceedings in Germany. The company hit some serious cash flow problems and the management board decided to step in because, “pending illiquidity puts continued business operations at risk,” according to a statement on the vendor’s website.
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DataCore charms channel partners
Storage virtualisation software vendor DataCore gathered together more than 70 distributor and reseller partners for its third Central European partner conference, which was held in Hagen, Germany. The number of partners at the event was double the amount that attended in the previous year.
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CommVault announces Magirus deal
CommVault has turned to pan-European VAD Magirus to build up the channel to market for its latest data and information management solutions. Magirus will now offer CommVault Simpana software as part of its storage and data management portfolio. The distribution deal covers the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland.
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Komplett pulls out of Western Europe
Norway-based e-commerce outfit Komplett has shut up shop in Western Europe. The company, which sells components, PCs, home electronics and related kit to end-users and resellers, has pulled the online shutters down on its websites in the UK, Germany, France and Austria. Komplett’s loss-making operations in Western Europe accounted for just 6% of group sales in the first quarter of 2008.
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SOA software specialist AmberPoint has signed a distribution agreement with Italian software specialist Eurosel. The move is the latest in a series of distribution deals for AmberPoint, which has seen the company expand its channel to market across Europe. AmberPoint claims that its SOA management system is the most widely distributed and resold runtime governance software in the world.
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