Bell Micro Purchases U.K. Distributor

A distributor of enterprise, storage and security products, and related professional services in the United Kingdom and Ireland, OpenPSL has 160 employees and expects to report about $209 million in revenue for its fiscal year ending July 31. The company has six divisions: Enterprise, Commercial, Partner Services, Security, an Ireland-based unit specializing in Oracle and Hewlett-Packard solutions and a specialized IBM unit.

Plans call for OpenPSL's management team, led by CEO Mike Kontowtt, to continue to manage the company as a business unit, focusing on selected customers and products, according to San Jose, Calif.-based Bell Micro. OpenPSL's management will report to Graeme Watt, president of European, African and Middle Eastern operations at Bell Micro.

"OpenPSL is highly regarded for the quality of its management team and staff, as well as the depth of their customer relationships. Their focus on bringing the highest-quality services to the market has made them one of the leading independent enterprise value-added distributors in Europe," Bell Micro President and CEO Don Bell said in a statement. "By combining the extensive personnel expertise, product lines and services of OpenPSL with Bell Microproducts' European strengths and capabilities, we are committed to bringing our customers an exceptional range of storage and computing solutions."