NOVELL New Zealand has extended distributor Express Data’s portfolio to include the vendor’s Linux range.
In November, Utah-based Novell announced its agreement to buy SuSE for $US210 million. The German company was one of the main suppliers of Linux operating systems to big business.
Express Data’s agency started this month. “It just drops straight into our Novell line-up,” the distributor’s sales manager Paul Plester says.
He says if overseas media and business interest are a barometer, then Novell should “make a lot of money” from Linux in New Zealand.
“Novell’s entering into a new dynamic business phase by where they are reinventing themselves back to where they were [with early NetWare],” he says.
“Overseas market indications are that it will be very successful.”
Express Data is running Linux “101” training courses and open days.
“It’s fairly experimental at this stage,” Plester says.
Novell New Zealand manager Matthew Christie says Express Data’s Linux appointment is “really just an extension of what we’re doing”.
Express Data’s Australian resources, good “marketing reach and relationships with resellers” were factors in the appointment, Christie says. Novell is looking to “recruit” four to five resellers that can provide Linux implementation and support. It is in talks with Auckland’s Open Systems Specialists and Gen-i owned Asterisk.
Meanwhile, Novell has increased its staff numbers from 14 at the start of last year to 17. Mike Kirkaldie has joined as client partner manager and Aimiee Jones as customer care representative, and the company is about to take on a programme manager.
Christie would not give details of the financial year to October 31 but says business at ACC and Telecom have been part of a turnaround for the vendor.
“Two years ago [the market] was pretty flat. Then we started to get some traction with consulting [work] around our new technologies.” These included the company’s identity management and directory services under its re-badged Nsure web access and security suite.
