Channel strategy - Peregrine swoops on small firms

Asset and infrastructure management vendor Peregrine Systems is going indirect to attack the UK small-business market by partnering resellers EC Soft and FH Computers.

Asset and infrastructure management vendor Peregrine Systems is going indirect to attack the UK small-business market by partnering resellers EC Soft and FH Computers.

The former direct-only vendor has launched a pre-packaged NT version of its high-end enterprise product called InfraCenter for Workgroups.

The product is aimed at medium-sized companies or departments of larger firms with between 200 and 2,500 desktops.

Offering customers the ability to lower the total cost of ownership for PC networks, Peregrine claims its system can be up and running in about three weeks to help track IT assets. It also offers help with change management, problem management and purchase and lease management.

David Griffiths, EMEA business development manager for InfraCenter at Peregrine, said there are many medium-sized businesses that have the same infrastructure as larger corporations but do not have the resources to implement an enterprise-level system.

Paul Clarke, director of EC Soft, said it was targeting firms at the departmental level, as well as SMEs, with InfraCenter for Workgroups.

At one site, he said EC Soft had set up the product in the human resources department and hoped for a "domino effect" in the firm.

As a Tivoli reseller, Clarke said EC Soft was also offering Peregrine on top of Tivoli's systems management capabilities.

Pelin Wood, senior product manager at Peregrine, said a Linux version and an application service provider strategy are also being developed.