Livingston seals IBM rent deal with Ingram

Distributor meets increasing demand from resellers wanting to lease kit by signing rental firm to lease RS/6000 servers

Livingston Rental has signed a deal with Ingram Micro to enable the distributor to hire out IBM RS/6000 servers to resellers.

Ingram has established the rental programme in response to a growing demand from resellers for leasing product. Resellers often require extra hardware on a short-term basis, but do not want to increase their capital outlay, and rental is seen as a way to fulfil such requirements.

The distributor said it was seeking additional business in the RS/6000 market, but had been finding it difficult to recruit new resellers for the hardware. According to Geoff Gates, RS/6000 business manager at Ingram, the programme will allow non-IBM users to move their software from one platform to another ?relatively inexpensively?.

Ingram believes the programme will give it easier access to new customers, and hopes that after offering rental, it will be able to convince resellers to buy the machines outright.

Through Livingston Rental, resellers will be able to rent the RS/6000 boxes on a six-month scheme run by Ingram. The programme is effective immediately.

Harry Scott, director of the computing business unit at Livingston, said: ?The RS/6000 and resellers are very fertile markets for us, particularly for resellers who need additional machines for training, porting and implementing new systems for customers.?

Livingston generates 60 per cent of its business from users, while the remainder comes from rentals from resellers.

The move comes two months after the enterprise computing division (ECD) at Ingram, responsible for RS/6000s and HP servers, lost its European vice president Rob Johnson, and UK general manager Jim Calderbank (PC Dealer, 23 April). Existing Ingram staff have assumed these responsibilities.