Briefs: October 24, 2005

ARUBA OFFERS NEW ACCESS POINTS

The AP-41 is a single-radio access point aimed at home office users while the dual-radio AP-65 enables workers to set up a secure mobile hot spot that also provides access to their desk phones via voice over WLAN-enabled handsets.

Security features built into the new 802.11a/b/g access points enable them to automatically form secure IPSec tunnels from remote locations to an Aruba Mobility Controller at the corporate data center, part of the vendor&s strategy to authenticate mobile users and then allow access based on variables such as location, time of day and application, said Keerti Melkote, Aruba founder and vice president.

In addition, both access points have the ability to monitor the airwaves and detect wireless intrusions.

The AP-41 and AP-65 access points are available now for $195 and $495, respectively.

JUDGE APPROVES AMHERST&S CHAPTER 7 LIQUIDATION
A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge last week approved a motion that has converted solution provider Amherst Technologies& Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing into a Chapter 7 liquidation and appointed a trustee to oversee the case.

Judge J. Michael Deasey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Hampshire in Manchester approved a motion from IBM Credit to lift a stay, allowing IBM Credit to seize collateral, securing its $32.7 million debtor in possession loan.

Amherst Technologies, a 22-year-old, $200 million solution provider that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July, was set to formally file Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation last Friday, sources said. Amherst Executive Chairman Gerald Birin would not comment.

The filing comes with IBM Credit trying to sell Amherst to solution provider ePlus Technology for about $2 million and assumed debt. PC Connection and PC Mall also threw their hats into the ring in a bid to acquire the Amherst assets, sources said. Executives at PC Connection and rival PC Mall were unavailable for comment at press time.

The last-minute offers pit the two companies against solution provider ePlus, which announced two weeks ago that it had signed an exclusive letter of intent to purchase the operating assets of Amherst for $2 million in cash.

EPlus would not comment on the Amherst situation. But an ePlus source said the company is committed to purchasing the operating assets of the company and retaining key personnel.

Furthermore, there will be no disruption to any customer orders or business relationships, the ePlus source said.

EMC AGREES TO PAY $275M FOR IMAGING ISV CAPTIVA SOFTWARE
EMC Software said last Thursday it would pay about $275 million in cash for Captiva Software, a document management vendor.

Captiva&s product line includes a variety of applications for enterprise-class forms processing, data capture, invoice processing, e-mail image processing and scanning. The vendor also targets the medical imaging market.

The latest acquisition extends EMC&s information life-cycle management strategy—combining it with the content management technology it acquired with Documentum to automate both the input and management of documents, said Whitney Tidmarsh, EMC&s vice president of solutions marketing.

About 60 percent of Captiva&s sales are direct, but Tidmarsh said EMC sees the channel playing an important role in the future. When EMC bought Documentum, that company had a small indirect business, but Tidmarsh said more Documentum sales now move through the channel. That&s especially true for software handling online electronic collaboration and for records management. The deal is expected to close late this year or early next year.

EMC TABS TUCCI TO REPLACE RUETTGERS AS CHAIRMAN IN &06
EMC announced last week that Joe Tucci will become chairman, effective Jan. 1, 2006.

Tucci will continue to serve as president and CEO of EMC, a role he has held since January 2001. Mike Ruettgers, EMC&s chairman since January 2001, has resigned from the board as of Dec. 31. He will continue as a senior adviser to the company.

POWER DSINE ADDS TRAINING, LEAD-SHARING PROGRAMS
PowerDsine last week revamped its channel program for solution providers selling its Power over Ethernet products.

The new Preferred VAR Program adds new registration and lead-sharing programs, dedicated training and co-op marketing activities. The program includes two partner designations—Associate Partner and Gold Partner. Once Associate Partners hit a minimum of $15,000 in list price sales within any single quarter, they are awarded Gold status, along with the additional financial benefits and marketing support that are part of the program&s top tier. The company said it currently works with more than 1,000 partners worldwide.

BEA SYSTEMS FINALIZES $204M PURCHASE OF PLUMTREE
BEA Systems said late last week it finalized its $204 million acquisition of portal pioneer Plumtree Software.

BEA said the combination of Plumtree&s enterprise portals, including portals that span J2EE and .Net worlds, will strengthen its ability to help customers insert portal technologies into their service-oriented architecture game plan.

“The portal is becoming the point of integration in the enterprise,” Alfred Chuang, chairman and chief executive officer of BEA, said in a statement released Thursday. BEA made its name in Web application servers.

With the deal finalized, Plumtree becomes a new BEA product unit led by BEA Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President Mark Carges.

CDW POSTS RECORD 3Q SALES THANKS TO SYSTEMS, STORAGE
CDW reported record quarterly sales and earnings for its third quarter ended Sept. 30, led by a nearly 18 percent jump in data storage sales and almost 17 percent growth in desktops and servers.

The solution provider said net income reached $73.1 million, a 12.2 percent increase over the $65.2 million reported for third quarter 2004. Revenues totaled $1.67 billion, up 10.2 percent over the $1.51 billion reported for the year-earlier period.

CDW Chairman and CEO John Edwardson said that three product categories, including storage, desktops and servers, and network communications, saw the biggest revenue gains during the quarter.

Especially encouraging, Edwardson said, was that CDW saw a unit price increase in servers and desktops. “We are moving into bigger and bigger servers. And with desktops, people are getting a lot of bells and whistles, and with that we can move the unit price up a bit.”