Intel Spin-Off LANDesk Sitting Pretty

"We are going to have our best quarter ever in [the fourth quarter," said Robert Neagle, director of outbound marketing for the Riverton, Utah-based software maker.

In September, Intel said it would spin off its LANDesk unit into an independent company, owned partly by two venture capital firms. The new company has about 150 employees and sells entirely through channel partners. David Taylor, director of channels at LANDesk, said the company has been slowly growing its ranks of authorized solution providers. In this way, LANDesk can focus on top-level partners that can hire dedicated numbers of engineers and other personnel to support a solution, he said.

Because LANDesk focuses on only about 50 "Expert Solution Providers" in the United States, the company said it is able to provide higher-quality, value-added solution sets to the market. It will, however, begin offering a broader product line to larger volumes of VARs, including its Instant Support Suite server-based client management solution. It also will offer Instant Support Suite Pro, a higher-end solution, Neagle said.

To date, the spin-off has received mostly upbeat reviews from channel partners.

"We were very surprised about how smoothly the transition from Intel %85 actually was," said Ashley Leonard, CEO of Network D, Newport Beach, Calif. "We were expecting it to be a very difficult transition, but it was very well-received." Leonard said LANDesk is more focused on providing upgrades, patches and enhancements to the software and has made "definite improvements in marketing" since completing its spin-off.