Landis brushes off Shiva

Landis has put an end to its feud with Shiva by canning the vendor throughout Europe and signing a UK distribution agreement with its arch rival Ascend.

The astonishing turnaround follows a war of words, in which Landis claimed Shiva agreed to activate it in the UK on condition it signed with one of the top three networking vendors. Shiva refuted the claims, insisting the decision to sign Landis would be based on performance (PC Dealer, 20 May).

Roger Paul, Landis UK managing director, said: 'Shiva's problems, including weakening market position and redundancies, began to mount up, but Landis continued to work towards 1 April when it was agreed we would be signed in the UK.' He said the deadline was put back until the beginning of May while the distributor secured a deal with Bay Networks, but when the date changed again, 'enough was enough'.

Jan Bruggink, Shiva EMEA director of distribution, confirmed he had received notification that the distribution agreement had ended effective from 19 May. 'It was an emotional response to the fax I sent to Landis confirming we would consider the distributor for UK accreditation at the end of June,' he said.

'We had several meetings with Landis. We were told in December it had a UK agreement with Bay and in January we were informed of an agreement with 3Com - this never happened.'

Mark Purdom, Ascend European strategic marketing manager, said: 'We told Landis if it wanted to work with us it could not work with Shiva - we didn't want direct competition.'

Commenting on speculation over whether Ascend distributor Unity would be canned as a result of the Landis appointment, Marie Patrick, UK channel sales director at Ascend, insisted: 'Unity has not been performing in the way it should but there will certainly be no change until September when the contract comes up for review.'