Actualités

Greenliant and Future Electronics sign global distribution agreement
2010-11-04
Greenliant Systems, which is specialize in energy-efficient, solid state storage technology, and Future Electronics have signed a worldwide franchise distribution agreement. The intent is for Future Electronics to provide global sales, design support and fulfillment services for Greenliant's product offering of small form factor solid-state drives, embedded controllers and specialty flash memory products. In EMEA region, Greenliant products will be available through Future Electronics offices in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Turkey.

David Grant appointed to Senior Vice President Europe, Westcon Group
2010-08-24
Networking, convergence, security and mobility VAD Westcon has been promoted David Grant to senior vice president, Europe. He will continue reporting directly to Westcon Group President and CEO, Dean Douglas. In his new role, Grant will have primary responsibility for the continued growth Westcon Group's European business, including its European strategy, human resources and legal organizations, supporting the expansion strategy in the Nordics, the Baltics and Southern Europe of the company. David Grant has been with Westcon Convergence for three years and was previously CEO of European distributor Crane before its acquisition by Westcon Group in 2007. Prior to his role at Crane, Grant spent 14 years in a variety of senior level positions with Canon UK Ltd.

Barthe enters IT market
2010-03-25
Cebit 2010/France : created in 1927, Barthe is an historical vendor on foreign language learning products. It was among the newcomers on Cebit, with a booth on Planet Reseller. The company was presenting there its newborn product, Duplicator. This product ought to be the cheaper USB stick autonomous duplicator. It exists in two models, of 21 and 35 ports which are sold €699 and €899 excl. VAT. Duplicator has been created following a recurrent demand from teachers – the usual Barthe's market – which were looking for a simple solution to duplicate content for their students. In France, it fits perfectly well in current IT equipment State program for Digital School. The company is testing IT market through its presence on Cebit. According to Stéphanie Kabela, export sales manager of Barthe, Duplicator has met a huge interest from Cebit visitors : « two of them have even signed firm orders », she says. Many contacts have been made over whole Europe, with resellers wishing to sell the product, or to use it for their own use or for service providing. Everywhere, distribution network remains to be built.

Multitech cellular modems now available via Future Electronics
2009-08-24
Multi-Tech Systems' cellular modems, that enable machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, are now available through Future Electronics in the EMEA markets. Future Electronics clients will be able to find them through Future offices in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Turkey.

A new fraud for Esys ?
2009-04-07
Once a major IT distributor in Asia and Europe with a turnover of almost $3 billion, Singapore-based Esys Distribution has been involved in many controversies since 2006. Involved in a fraud with Karma and CHS in the early 2000s, the company’s distribution agreement with Seagate was terminated in 2007 because of its refusal of an audit of its sales. The hard drive vendor then sued Esys for about $130 million on the charges of non payment of arrears and claiming rebates fraudulently.

A year later, Estate Office Chandigarh, an Indian local government body, found Esys India guilty of unethical practices and changing its shareholding pattern against the rules of allotment of 6 acres of land. The land was resumed by local court, which charged promoters of the company for unethical activities and imposed it a heavy fine (source : Hindustan Times 01/30/2008 and 10/14/2008).

In 2008, Esys closed without notice its Australian subsidiary. This embarrassed local resellers, which were thus unable to cover warranty claims for Chimei monitors they purchased from it (source : Computer Reseller News Australia, 02/26/2009).

More recently, the company is being involved in a major financial mess with Bombay-listed Teledata, according to Indian newspaper Financial Chronicle. As usually, Esys owners refuse to answer to journalist questions, which raises more eyebrows and interest. The newspaper has questioned the authenticity of revenue from Esys Singapore subsidiaries for almost $1 billion, as Esys books have not been audited for the last two years. According to the newspaper, another glaring example of fraud in balance sheet is that Teledata is showing revenue from Esys subsidiaries it does not own.

In EMEA region, the company seems to reorganize for future. esysdistribution.com and esysglobal.com websites are offline since end of 2008. This should not help Esys working. And, indeed, the company has chosen to cover Belgian and French sales from Netherlands. Like its Austrian and Italian offices (which are nowhere to be found on official national company listings), its Polish subsidiary was closed in February, while warranty claims on products sold in the country should be sent to a company named Ezy Infotech in the Netherlands. And, purely by chance and a few weeks later, a Polish Ezy Infotech was established. Ezy and Esys are of course officially totally unrelated, according to Esys Germany manager Mark Coplin who declined to answer further to our questions. Even if Ezy Infotech is the property (among other companies such as Tradelabs, Strategybot or Esys Global in Dubai) of Niraj Goel, the brother of Vikas Goel, founder and owner of Esys Distribution. Even better : in the Netherlands, both companies are located in the same city. And in Singapore, Ezy Infotech is run from the premises owned by Esys Singapore. Future will tell if all this was also purely by chance.

Of course, being unrelated, Ezy Infotech should be untouched by Esys frauds. But interestingly enough, Indian Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) has rejected application of Ezy Infotech for a major investment on the charges that promoters of company are of doubtful credentials and that there are major allegations of frauds against them (source : FIPB).

Edit : follow-up about relations between Seagate, Esys and Ezy here.