Damovo given Catalist to public-sector cash

VAR Damovo has been awarded supplier status on the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Buying Solutions’ Catalist framework.

The reseller will now be officially qualified as being able to sell to any public sector organisations, such as central government, the NHS, schools and housing trusts.

Damovo has been accredited in the voice, data and convergence categories in the Communications Solutions lot. It will compete against other firms in the lot including BT, Cable & Wireless, Affiniti, IBM, Computacenter, Siemens, Ericsson, Fujitsu Services and Hewlett-Packard.

The OGC named the 28 approved suppliers on its Catalist IT catalogue earlier this year (CRN, 20 February). The successful suppliers were trimmed from about 170 candidates.

Paul Renucci, managing director of Damovo, said the appointment as a Catalist supplier will increase Damovo’s access to public-sector bodies.

“More than 60 per cent of our business is in the government sector,” he said. “This appointment is another route into our core market. We are a proven supplier of voice, data and convergence. We’ve been doing well in these areas and the scoring we were given by the OGC reflects this.”

Gary Duke, sales director of reseller Lan 2 Lan, said the public sector is a huge area of growth for the channel.

“The public sector is spending a lot on security but the voice, data and convergence side is picking up,” he said. “Local authorities and the NHS are looking towards IP telephony.”

Duke added that Lan 2 Lan has seen rise in demand from the public sector in the past eight months.

trevor_treharne@vnu.co.uk