Stories by: Richard Noone

When Nortel Networks acquired data networking vendor Bay Networks in 1998 and Web switching manufacturer Alteon in 2000, it suddenly had more than 3000 resellers in the Asia-Pacific. The past 18 months have seen Nortel take a broom to its channel, sweeping it back to a mere 130 partners across the region.

The champagne was finally flowing at Powerlan last week after the company secured a contract to deploy its Portfolio Manager system into the Tower Group.

Acer Computer has announced its strategic assault on the burgeoning handheld market with four new models to be launched in October.

Networking manufacturer Netgear has struck a promotional deal with Telstra that aims to drive the adoption of broadband Internet in the small and medium business sectors.

Victorian-based Validate Technologies has become the exclusive distributor for a new suite of products designed to secure the application layer of databases, groupware and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

It's taken over 18 months but Powerlan has finally divested its integration and volume sales businesses and is now free to chase lucrative overseas software dollars. At least that's the message taken from the sale of its remaining Business Integration (BI) units in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales to Optima and NetOptions last week.

It's been five years since Multiactive Software purchased the once-popular Australian software icon Tracker Software. Now Tracker's original founder Paul Dodd is back, and set to launch a new contact database application, Contact Tracker, with a little help from his old mate Roger Bushell.

Sun Microsystems veteran and notable industry figure Russell Bate has joined the board of emerging home-grown telecommunications software developer CR-X. His appointment comes as the Melbourne-based company prepares to springboard its black-box software into the telco and utilities sectors.

Disaster recovery and outsourcing company Classic Blue has beefed up its AS/400 i-Series support in the wake of increased customer demand.

A new services conglomerate with over $40 million in the coffers is likely to start trawling the channel for potential acquisitions after the boards of DVT Holdings and Utility Services Corporation (USC) agreed to a reverse takeover last month.

IBM has played match-maker by uniting SSA Global Technologies with Candle Corporation to take an online procurement system based on Big Blue's WebSphere platform to market.