Novell calms VARs

Reassures resellers on CTP acquisition.

Novell has claimed its acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP), finalised last week, will not take service-margin bread from its resellers' mouths.

Instead, the networking vendor said it planned to expand its services business and seek strategic VAR partnerships. To this end, Novell aims to expand the services side of its business to contribute up to 40 per cent of its total UK turnover, with product sales making up the remainder.

The acquisition of IT consulting firm CTP for about $266m (£186m) was announced in March (CRN, 21 March). Steve Brown, UK regional director at Novell, said: "It is an end-to-end merger, with Cambridge retaining its brand for customer consistency."

He claimed the increase in consultancy skills at Novell would not take business from reseller partners but would complement them. "It will not conflict with our channel. The acquired skills will help design business solutions which our partners will deliver," he said.

Eddy Alejos, technical director at Novell reseller Dynax, said: "There may be competition; users prefer help from the manufacturer. But this happens anyway."

Brown said competition will be avoided in most cases because partners integrate Novell technologies with those of other vendors as part of an overall solution.

"If Novell offers services itself it will struggle to access other vendors. The value of resellers is in their relationships with lots of vendors," Alejos said. "I think Novell will only work directly with large customers that have particularly sticky problems with Novell products."

Novell chief executive Jack Messman said the firm will focus directly on complex, large enterprises, and the channel will be used for the SME sector.