REAL Applications Ltd, the value-added and wholesale IBM midrange equipment reselling division of lessor El Camino Resources of Woodland Hills, California, has sold a chunk of itself to competitor Savoir Technology Group of Campbell, California. Savoir has paid $12.9m to buy REAL Applications’ AS/400 and RS/6000 distribution business, which brought in about $80m in revenue for REAL Applications during the last 12 months. The piece of REAL Applications that Savoir bought was a wholesale distributor of AS/400 and RS/6000 equipment, which it sold to smaller retail distributors. That wholesale business will now be merged into Business Partner Solutions, Savoir’s own wholesale subsidiary. The purchase, says Savoir, makes the company the biggest wholesale distributors of IBM midrange equipment in the world. For its part, REAL Applications says that it would have been costly to build the kind of inventory systems and integration skills that Savoir already has and that by exiting the wholesale distribution business and having Savoir handle the procurement and integration of systems it can better concentrate on its own end user retail business. REAL Applications sells application software, including a popular intellectual property management suite, and has a considerable installed base of AS/400 and RS/6000 customers to serve. The deal calls for REAL Applications to buy its RS/6000 and SP server equipment from BP Solutions, which is an authorized IBM server assembler. REAL Applications will also get IBM Netfinity servers from BP Solutions; the company has sufficient volumes and tight enough relationships with IBM in the AS/400 market to be able to get its AS/400 equipment directly from Big Blue on behalf of its customers. á
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