C2000 hits out at loveless Novell

You don't mean that much to me

Computer 2000 has slammed Novell by labelling the software maker as “not channel-friendly”.

Novell recently dropped the IT distie and has warned other UK distributors to pull their act together or face being axed by the firm.

However, C2000’s UK software boss James Reed told The Register that he wasn’t bothered about losing the company’s distribution account with Novell earlier this summer.

“The first I heard about it was a few emails telling us the contract had ended,” he said. “We only had two contacts at Novell, and they suddenly disappeared.”

Reed said that C2000 hadn’t been “heavily focused on” Novell for some time now and described the account it had with the firm as "negligible".

He said customers weren’t really chasing the software maker’s products. Reed claimed Novell “lacked resources and marketing funds” and was “vastly over-distributed” even as its business has “repeatedly shrunk over the past decade.”

Earlier this week Novell inked a new distie deal with Avnet. At the same time it declared that the company was continuing to “rationalise” its channel business.

A spokeswoman at the vendor told us on Wednesday that Novell had in fact reduced its total number of UK distributors by 25 per cent since 1 January 2009, chiming with Reed’s comment that the firm simply had too many disties on its books.

We asked Novell to respond to Reed's claims that the firm wasn't showing much love for the channel. However, at time of publication it hadn't got back to us with comment. ®