Hot on the heels of success in the retail arena, Quarterdeck Australia is pushing into the channel for even more sales. Quarterdeck develops software utilities for virus protection, disk cloning and crash protection.
The catalyst for a sales boom, says general manager Earl White, comes mainly from Microsoft. He claims Bill Gates has effectively endorsed cloning with the release of Windows 98 and the pending release of NT 5.0 because both platforms support it.
Additionally, White believes Symantec's recent purchase of Binary Research's successful Ghost cloning product in May has piqued the interest of the market. Symantec plans to release a Norton-branded version of Ghost later this year (see ARN, July 8, 1998, page 18).
White said utility vendors traditionally experienced a slow-down in sales in the lead-up to the release of a new operating system, in this case Windows 98. He predicted an upturn in sales of his products now Windows 98 has been released.
Earlier this year, Quarterdeck signed an OEM agreement with Teco Business Software to bundle Quarterdeck's RealHelp with every PC that comes off the assembly line. The agreement will see hundreds of resellers stock machines with RealHelp installed, White said.
He says this will reduce the number of service calls resellers receive, which in turn reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the PC.
White said Quarterdeck utilities offered resellers an opportunity to gain high margin for comparatively low time and manpower investment.
Quarterdeck's product line includes CleanSweep, ViruSweep, DiskClone and Partition-It. The products are compatible with Windows 98.
Quarterdeck Australia
Phone: (02) 9545 4072
Fax: (02) 9545 4069
www.quarterdeck.com
