ETC has confirmed that it is one of the two distributors that has parted company with Novell in its latest distribution shuffle.

But the distributor has stated that its ties to the vendor were not that deep and it was only connected to Novell after it acquired Platespin earlier this year.

As revealed by CRN earlier this week, the software vendor has split from two distributors this week - the final stage in its distribution cull which saw Computer 2000 and a couple of smaller players served termination notifications.

Novell now counts Avnet, Magirus, DNS Arrow, Bell Micro, Interactive Ideas and CMS Peripherals among its distribution partners. The identity of the second distributor to be dropped is still undisclosed.

In a statement, an ETC representative said: "We have never been a strategic Novell distributor. ETC, as a successful Platespin distributor, has had very positive discussions with Novell.

"While we feel that the strategy Novell has adopted is absolutely right for its business, it was mutually agreed not to proceed at this time, particularly in the light of ETC's strategic commitments around Symantec, Citrix and VMware. "

Earlier this week Dan Veitkus, vice president and general manager of partners for EMEA at Novell, claimed the vendor now has the appropriate “distribution footprint” in the UK.