Enlighten Software Inc is claiming thata new OEM relationship with a mystery multi-million Unix and NT hardware vendor heralds a fundamental change of direction for the company. Enlighten has entered into a three year agreement with the OEM, which will bundle the basic administration version of its Enlighten/DSM systems management framework with its workstations and servers, and expects the deal to generate revenues of some $15m over the next three years. The company promises to reveal itself at the beginning of February, when it will include the news as part of a wider announcement focusing on lower cost of ownership and distributed systems management. Enlighten sold off its proprietary performance monitoring tools for Tandem hardware to New Dimension Software Ltd in September last year (CI No 3,254) in order to concentrate on out-of-the box management software for Unix and NT systems. Now the company is changing its distribution model from direct sales to a few large companies over to an indirect model through OEMs and reseller channels. The new deal will take Enlighten’s customer base up from around 30 large end- user customers to the seeding of 10,000 customer sites with the basic edition of DSM, providing opporunities for additional products and services. The OEM, a US company, will be marketing, selling and supporting the product, according to Parker, who says that further deals are in the pipeline. Proceeds from the sale of its Performance Monitor software will make Enlighten’s forthcoming fourth quarter results its first profitable quarter for two and a half years, said Parker, who expects the first benefits of the new deal to begin showing up in the first and second quarters of next year. Enlighten now has its new management team in place, says it will shave operational expenses next year by 20% through cutting some regional offices, and will shortly add further meat to its new indirect sales model.
