Irvine, California-based Pick Systems Inc, in one of the periodic flip-flops that has marked the 20 years of its existence, has again gone out of the hardware business: it’s turned over PickTel, the unit it set up to distribute Pick on AT&T Computer Systems gear, to two of its former managers, Bill Grover, its president, and Gil Figueroa, former executive vice-president of Pick Systems itself, to run independently of Pick. Pick Blue, once claimed on paper to be IBM Corp’s largest reseller of RTs, now exists only on paper, according to Pick vice-president Steve Kruse, its 120 dealers having been turned over to other IBM-independent RT resellers such as Dickens Data Inc and Ultimate Corp. Kruse attributed the decision to refocus on software in part to the clash of cultures between box shifting and programming. Kruse says Pick won’t cut any more exclusive licensing deals or provide source code to its resellers any more at it attempts to make its business more horizontal and far-flung.
