Ideal and CA split

Firms go their separate ways after failure of last-ditch negotiations

After last-ditch negotiations failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion for both parties, Computer Associates (CA) and Ideal have decided to go their separate ways.

Talks of a split between the vendor and distributor had been rife in the channel, but last week it was believed that CA was considering a change to an alternative business model.

Andy Shepperd, vice president of EMEA channel sales at CA, told vnunet.com's sister publication Computer Reseller News the split was amicable.

"Ideal came to us with a proposition to interact with them in a new way in terms of online licensing technology, but we decided the proposition was not wide enough for our future business and amicably agreed to end the relationship," he said.

"We still have a strong distributor base with Computer 2000, CMS and Ingram Micro, and we are confident that this will have little impact on our resellers."

Shepperd said the two will still work together through a normal notice period, which will give former Ideal/CA resellers a chance to partner with its remaining distributors.

Alex Tatham, vice president of global software distribution at Ideal, said the split happened because Ideal was not making money from CA products.

"The relationship wasn't working and we were not making any money so we decided amicably that we should split.

"We did offer CA an alternative model, but they decided against it. CA has been losing market share so we decided it would be better if we were not associated with them any more," Tatham said.

Steve Smith, sales director at specialist storage distributor CMS Peripherals, said the split would give them a competitive advantage.,p>"I think Ideal is continuing to evaluate its business, and for us as a storage-focused distributor it is good news because we are operating in a less crowded market.

"We see a lot of mileage in the CA line and because we enjoy a specialist face-to-face relationship with resellers and want to teach resellers how to sell storage, this news can only work to our advantage," he said.

Matt Sanderson, head of category software and PCs at Ingram, added: "We see this as a great opportunity for us. We're doing a lot of work with CA and have been experiencing a growth spurt with them."