The Santa Cruz Operation is at last on the verge of resolving distribution problems that have been threatening its market in the Benelux countries over the last few months. The problems started last year when Santa Cruz’s official distributor, Metrologie SA-owned Toplog Benelux, began to lose ground in the Unix operating system market following an internal re-shuffle. Santa Cruz lost faith in Toplog, and appointed a second distributor, Topdata – a company within the rapidly expanding Newtron Holding Groep of Amsterdam – in an attempt to help make up some of the lost ground. However, as well bringing margins down by as much as 15%, an ensuing price war between the distributors seriously damaged Santa Cruz’s credibility across Benelux, with end-user support falling to an all-time low. At the beginning of December last year, an anonymous telephone caller told Computergram’s Brussels news desk that Topdata was about to lose the battle: its business with SCO Unix had been a spectacular failure, with monthly revenues of less than UKP1,500. Confirming that this figure was quite likely, Santa Cruz UK’s Benelux contract negotiator, Steve Clark, revealed that the company was in the process of transferring the distributorship to TM Data – another member of the Newtron Group. While Topdata vehemently denies this, it has not issued any statement to clarify its relationship with Santa Cruz. However, Brussels-based TM Data boss, Bernard Demarsin, has since confirmed that negotiations with Santa Cruz are in the final stages, and had it not been for the US operation cancelling flights to Europe because of the Gulf War, the deal would have been clinched by now. Demarsin – who will play a central role in any ambitions that $200m-a-year Newtron has in Belgium – is anxious to avoid similar conflict happening again – we are not interested in starting a price war, he said. Assuming contracts are signed – Santa Cruz will attempt the trip to Europe again this week – TM Data will start selling Santa Cruz Unix bundled with the Wyse Technology and Compaq Computer machines it supplies.
