CHANNEL NEWS

Bitco Enterprises Inc., Ashburn, Va., and Maxtor Corp., Milpitas, Calif., have entered into a distribution agreement under which federal integrators will gain access to Maxtor's storage products.

Under the pact, Bitco's subsidiary, Decision Support Systems of Ashburn, will distribute Maxtor's DiamondMax hard drives to its channel customers.

Adding Bitco Enterprises as a distribution partner provides Maxtor another point of purchase for its DiamondMax family of hard drives, and creates a new customer base and revenue source for the company, Maxtor officials said.

"We are very pleased to partner with Bitco Enterprises," said Mike Cordano, Maxtor's vice president of worldwide sales. "They will help us grow our market share in the government sector."

"DiamondMax is a highly regarded brand in the storage market," said Shaf Mohebbi, executive vice president of worldwide marketing at Bitco. "We are happy to be adding these quality drives to our offering, thereby dramatically extending our line of [original equipment manufacturer] solutions."

Technology solutions distributor DSS operates as an independent subsidiary of Bitco Enterprises. Bitco International and DSS merged in August 1999. The combined entity intends to provide a range of software, services, systems and component solutions to integrators and value-added resellers serving government and private-sector markets. The combined company had 1999 sales of $400 million.OTG Software Inc., Bethesda, Md., and Gadzoox Networks Inc., San Jose, Calif., have entered into an agreement to develop and certify interoperability between OTG's DiskXtender storage management software and Gadzoox's storage area network (SAN) technologies.

As part of the deal, OTG will begin certification testing of its DiskXtender 4.2 and DiskXtender 2000 products with Gadzoox's technology to further extend its presence in the SAN market.

"We are pleased to have OTG's storage products become part of our interoperable SAN solutions," said Ken Jensen, Gadzoox's director of business development.

"Through this interoperability testing with Gadzoox, OTG joins a family of tested SAN products that [value-added resellers] and customers can roll out with confidence," said Jerry Held, OTG vice president of business development.Siebel Systems Inc., San Mateo, Calif., and Quintus Corp., Fremont, Calif., have struck a worldwide reseller, marketing and technology alliance that will combine the companies' technology and channel strengths in e-business solutions.

Under the pact, Quintus will market and sell Siebel eBusiness Applications in conjunction with Quintus eContact through Quintus' worldwide sales force and distribution channels.

Siebel has licensed Quintus eContact universal queuing technology to add multimedia queuing and intelligent routing capabilities to future Siebel eBusiness Application releases. And Quintus has become a Strategic Software Partner in the Siebel Alliance program, which provides for extensive joint marketing and sales programs between the companies.

Quintus will resell Siebel's comprehensive family of eBusiness Applications for sales, marketing and customer service with integrated Quintus communications technology for managing customer interactions across multiple communications media such as the telephone, e-mail and Web.