Bell Micro To Create Software Licensing Program In U.S.

Bell Microproducts President, Chairman and CEO Don Bell announced his company's plans at the Raymond James IT Supply Chain conference, held last month in New York and co-hosted by CRN.

The San Jose-based distributor expects to tap Microsoft as its first U.S. vendor partner, said Alex Tatham, Bell Micro's vice president of global software.

"We have been appointed to their license aggregator program in Europe, and this is very much a planned attack of how we would do it [in the United States]," Tatham said.

Bell Micro is the largest Microsoft licensing partner in the United Kingdom, reporting $250 million in software sales in that region last year, Tatham said. About 80 percent of that revenue came from licenses, he said.

Bell Micro developed a proprietary tool in the United Kingdom, called License Desk on the Internet (LDI), that will be used in the United States as well, Tatham said. "It's a sales tool [that] empowers a reseller's salespeople. It allows them to quote a license and then manages the order from end to end," he said.

"We are the only online licensing tool in the world linked to Microsoft using .Net," Tatham said. "If you're a reseller salesperson and you need to quote a license, you can configure the order and send a quote. If the customer says, 'Yes, I want that,' we can deliver that license key within an hour from Microsoft. Anyone else will take 24 hours," Tatham said.

Bell Micro is recruiting several large vendors to integrate LDI into their systems but has not signed anybody yet, Tatham said. "It's fair to say we'll have other vendors [in the United States]," he said.

In Europe, Bell Micro has licensing agreements with Computer Associates International, Network Associates, Symantec and Veritas Software.

"If they can get Veritas [licenses in the United States], that's an area I'd like to move into," said Jim Shaffer, president and owner of Blue Rock Storage, a solution provider in San Diego.