Equinox hastens ending of product business

Equinox Solutions has claimed that its services arm will not be affected by its move to put its product distribution division into administration.

Equinox Solutions has claimed that its services arm will not be affected by its move to put its product distribution division into administration.

The company last month said it was discontinuing its product distribution business to focus on its increasingly lucrative managed services arm.

Baker Tilly has been named administrator of the product distribution division, where 34 staff have been made redundant, and is looking to sell any possible assets.

Equinox said it had originally planned to move to a managed services provider business model at the end of this year, but decided to implement the changes earlier because of the economic slowdown and falling margins.

Duncan Crook, managing director of Equinox Solutions, said: "We decided to drop the product business and as part of the restructure decided to give legal power to the administrator."The reason was to assure our clients that the decline in the products business will not affect the services business."

The product business will probably go to a voluntary agreement and revaluation, he added.

Crook said the services business has already won £50m worth of contracts in the two years since it began.

"It is an ideal add-on for resellers that deal in software, servers and desktop products. Convergence technology allows resellers to integrate voice services, unified messaging and remote access," said Crook.

More and more resellers are seeing their distribution partners adopting new strategies.

Peter Gatling, managing director of reseller Memorex Telex, said small distributors have to make decisions about future business models. "The move by Equinox is sensible. Distributors outside the top three or four must choose between volume distribution or niche services," he said.