Wyle Laboratories Inc is going to distribute Irvine, California-based Opus Systems’ Sparc-based line using its Electronic Marketing Group to sell the boxes to its network of 450 or more resellers in the US as well as turning them over to its direct sales force for resale to Fortune 1000 accounts. Under the agreement, Wyle will carry Opus’ Personal Mainframe 5000 workstations and servers, its new 5000 Personal Mainframe personal computer add-in boards and Opusengine motherboards which Wyle will distribute to resellers for integration into vertical market applications. Opus president Mark Johnston estimates the actual value of the deal to Opus at between $3m and $5m over the next 12 months, with Wyle paying Opus $18,000 for an average system. Johnston said Wyle, whose strength is on the West Coast, has already begun moving the product. Opus also has Pioneer, another classic distributor which like Wyle, sells Digital Equipment Corp systems, on the East Coast. Johnston predicts that all the classical distributors are currently making significant investments in Unix and are in discussions to pick up the RISC product. Alignments should be in place, he said, in the next nine to 12 months.
