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06 Mar 2006
james_sherwood@vnu.co.uk
Competition among Catalist suppliers has intensified after the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) made its third revision of the
Buying Solutions official list of public sector IT suppliers last week.
The OGC initially published a list of 29 suppliers to Catalist, but the government department then issued a correction to the list that did not include VAR Bull Information Systems, bringing the total number of suppliers down to 28.
However, a document leaked to CRN detailing a third version of the list last week showed that vendor Toshiba had been added and awarded the Client Devices and Peripherals lots. VAR Probrand has also been added to the list and awarded the general Reseller lot, bringing the total number of approved suppliers now on the list to 30.
In a statement to CRN, an OGC representative claimed that only a handful of suppliers had been affected by the changed line-up.
Online VAR Dabs.com has been removed from the Peripherals and Client Devices lots, leaving it with the IT Consumables and Accessories lot. Vendor Siemens has been removed from the Peripherals lot.
Centerprise International has been removed from the Network Infrastructure lot and added to Peripherals lot, but it has retained its Client Devices lot.
Stuart Green, strategic director at Centerprise, told CRN: “It’s a surprise we weren’t given Peripherals before. However, it’s strange that the OGC increased supplier numbers because I expected they would be decreased. This is bound to intensify competition, but may the best man win.”
Paul Barlow, group sales director at PC World Business, which was successful in the general Reseller lot, said: “It’s great to have final clarification of the list. We are now looking
forward to taking this further with the public sector.”
In a separate document leaked to CRN, the OGC accepted that mistakes had been made in awarding the contracts to suppliers, but it told CRN: “Every effort is made to ensure that mistakes do not happen, and OGC Buying Solutions has a quality assurance process that has been enacted in this instance.” C
>> Further reading:
www.channelweb.co.uk/2150619
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