Lifeboat Distribution

Last updated
Lifeboat Distribution
Company type Public
Nasdaq:  WSTG
Industry Software distribution
Headquarters
Eatontown, New Jersey
Number of locations
4
Area served
 Worldwide
Products Computer Software, Information Technology
RevenueIncrease2.svg $449 million (2017)
Number of employees
150
Website lifeboatdistribution.com

Lifeboat Distribution is an international value-added distributor. Their customers are vendors who specialize in virtualization/cloud computing, security, application and network infrastructure, business continuity/disaster recovery, database infrastructure and management, application lifecycle management, science/engineering, and other technical products. [1]

Contents

Lifeboat is headquartered in Eatontown, New Jersey, and also has offices in Arizona, Ontario, and Amsterdam. [2]

Lifeboat Distribution is a subsidiary of Wayside Technology Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: WSTG), which has been a publicly traded company since 1995. [3]

History

Early years

In June 1986, Lifeboat Associates was acquired by Voyager Software Corp. By 1988, Voyager was a three-division company; Lifeboat was the software distributor, Corsoft the corporate reseller, and Programmer's Paradise a mail-order operation. [4]

The 1990s and 2000s

In May 1995, Voyager Software Corp changed its name to Programmer's Paradise, Inc. and at that time, changed Lifeboat Associates' name to Lifeboat Distribution. In July 1995, Programmer's Paradise completed an initial public offering of its common stock. [5]

On January 9, 2001, Lifeboat's European operations were sold along with all other Programmer's Paradise European operations to PC-Ware (now known as the Comparex Group). [6]

Through the 2000s, Lifeboat expanded its vendor line card with established and emerging vendors such as InstallShield [7] (later to become Flexera Software), Intel Software, [8] TechSmith, [9] GFI, [10] and VMware.

Lifeboat developed a reputation for helping companies enter the two-tier (vendor-distributor-reseller) distribution model. For example, Lifeboat was VMware's first U.S. software distributor helping introduce that company’s nascent virtualization software to the channel. [11]

In 2004, Lifeboat Distribution was appointed as Intel's Software Authorized Distributor in order to make that company's internally developed high-performance software development tools available to customers worldwide. [8]

Present Day

Lifeboat specializes in technology domains that include not only virtualization/cloud computing, but also security, application and network infrastructure, database modeling, application lifecycle management, and business productivity.

Lifeboat recently added companies like Veeam Software, [12] SolarWinds, [13] and StorageCraft [14] to its line card. The company now represents an extensive set of software for the now mainstream virtualization space – products that are marketed to resellers through Lifeboat’s Virtualization World View portfolio. [15]

In 2010, Lifeboat opened an office in Almere, Netherlands in order to better serve the company’s European resellers. [16]

Lifeboat competes against much larger "broad line" distributors and must provide service differentiators to both its software vendors and its reseller customers. One way it has done this is through the deployment of innovative technologies, such as an electronic license key stocking system, EDI–based (Electronic Data Interchange) order processing, and data warehousing systems. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OS/2</span> Operating system from IBM

OS/2 is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 relative to Microsoft's new Windows 3.1 operating environment, the two companies severed the relationship in 1992 and OS/2 development fell to IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2", because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation personal computers. The first version of OS/2 was released in December 1987 and newer versions were released until December 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Red Hat</span> Computing services company

Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VMware</span> Multi-cloud service provider for all apps

VMware LLC is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture.

World Wide Technology, Inc. (WWT) is a privately-held technology services provider based in St. Louis, Missouri. The company has an annual revenue of $17.0 billion and employs over 9,000 people. WWT works in the areas of cloud computing, computer security, data centers, data analytics and artificial intelligence, computer networks, application software development, cell phone carrier networking, and consulting services.

PlateSpin is a software suite of Micro Focus International. Originally a standalone software company headquartered in Toronto, Canada, registered in Delaware, US as Platespin Inc. and founded by Robert Reive in 1999 with co-founders added later David Richards, Bruno Baloi and M. Verdun. Intel corp. via the Intel64fund was a key investor, along with 4Quarters Capital, Castlehill Ventures(Barry Laver) and AltaMira, the latter three all of Toronto, Canada. The original product for which the patent was filed was the Platespin Operations Center, the first usable VM provisioning tool for low cost deployment of servers in their VMs to Vmware ESX and GSX on 64bit processors. Platespin Operations Centre was designed to reduce operations cost and more efficiently use the resources of large servers, as well as deal with routine security patches to software servers and their OS efficiently. Reformed after a bankruptcy in 2003, the revived company released three successful products and is now part of OpenText after its acquisition of MicroFocus. PlateSpin products help manage physical and virtualized server workloads on VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, Citrix XenServer, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The following is a timeline of virtualization development. In computing, virtualization is the use of a computer to simulate another computer. Through virtualization, a host simulates a guest by exposing virtual hardware devices, which may be done through software or by allowing access to a physical device connected to the machine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VMware ESXi</span> Enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor for deploying and serving virtual computers

VMware ESXi is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on an operating system (OS); instead, it includes and integrates vital OS components, such as a kernel.

Ericom Software, Inc. is a Closter, New Jersey-based company that provides web isolation and remote application access software to businesses.

Magic Solutions International, Inc. was a company that specialized in help desk automation and asset management software. Based in the East Coast of the United States, the company emerged as an unplanned spin-off from a computer systems integrator, and was later considered one of the East Coast's most successful independent software vendors of the 1990s. Magic Solutions was founded in 1988 by Igal Lichtman and was headquartered in Paramus, New Jersey, U.S.

GlobalScape, Inc. (AMEX:GSB) is a software developer headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, United States.

Lifeboat Associates was a New York City company that was one of the largest microcomputer software distributors in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Lifeboat acted as an independent software broker marketing software to major hardware vendors such as Xerox, HP and Altos. As such Lifeboat Associates was instrumental in the founding of Autodesk and also financed the creation of PC Magazine.

6WIND is a virtual networking software company delivering disaggregated and cloud-native solutions to CSPs and enterprises globally. The company is privately held and headquartered in the West Paris area, in Montigny-le-Bretonneux. 6WIND has a global presence with offices in the US and APAC. The company provides virtualized networking software which is deployed in bare-metal or in virtual machines on COTS servers in public & private clouds. Their solutions are disaggregated and containerized based on the cloud-native architecture.

DynamicOps was an American private software company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts which developed cloud automation and management solutions. It was acquired by VMware in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual Computing Environment</span> American computer hardware brand

Virtual Computing Environment Company (VCE) was a division of EMC Corporation that manufactured converged infrastructure appliances for enterprise environments. Founded in 2009 under the name Acadia, it was originally a joint venture between EMC and Cisco Systems, with additional investments by Intel and EMC subsidiary VMware. EMC acquired a 90% controlling stake in VCE from Cisco in October 2014, giving it majority ownership. VCE ended in 2016 after an internal division realignment, followed by the sale of EMC to Dell.

TraceSecurity is a cybersecurity company that provides cloud-based IT governance, risk, and compliance management solutions for organizations.

Veeam Software was co-founded by Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov and is now a privately held US-based information technology company owned by Insight Partners that develops backup, disaster recovery and modern data protection software for virtual, cloud-native, SaaS, Kubernetes and physical workloads. While Veeam's start was built on protecting data across virtualized workloads, it has significantly expanded to protect data across a wide variety of platforms from AWS, Azure, google Cloud, Microsoft 365, Kubernetes etc. Veeam's current CEO, Anand Eswaran, has been pushing Veeam's strategy to accelerate share in the enterprise with adding several layers to Veeam's partnerships. Veeam took over the #1 market share in the data protection category in 2H'22. The company headquarters is in Columbus, Ohio, United States.

Stratoscale was a software company offering software-defined data center technology, with hyper-converged infrastructure and cloud computing capabilities. Stratoscale combined compute, storage, and networking hardware with no additional third party software. Stratoscale has shut down with no details for the future of its products.

Virtuozzo is a software company that develops virtualization and cloud management software for cloud computing providers, managed services providers and internet hosting service providers. The company's software enables service providers to offer Infrastructure as a service, Container-as-a-Service, Platform as a service, Kubernetes-as-a-Service, WordPress-as-a-Service and other solutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ALSO Holding</span>

ALSO Holding AG is a listed distribution and logistics company based in Emmen, Switzerland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Datera</span>

Datera was a global enterprise software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California that developed an enterprise software-defined storage platform. Datera was acquired by VMware in April 2021.

References

  1. ↑ "Climb Channel Solutions - Solutions".
  2. ↑ "Climb Channel Solutions - Contact Us".
  3. ↑ https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/wstg/interactive-chart [ bare URL ]
  4. ↑ (2006). "Programmer's Paradise Inc.". Reference for Business. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  5. ↑ Programmers Paradise Inc., Form 10-K, for the fiscal year ended December 31, 1996
  6. ↑ https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/945983/000089457902000025/ppi10k-0321.txt, Programmer's Paradise Form 10-K, for fiscal year ended December 31, 2001
  7. ↑ (Press Release) (2001-12-21). "Programmer's Paradise Announces Distribution Agreement With InstallShield". Business Wire. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  8. 1 2 (Press Release) Willet, Bill. (2004-02-23). "Lifeboat Distribution is Appointed Intel's Software Authorized Distributor". Business Wire. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  9. ↑ (Press Release) (2003-01-14). "Programmer's Paradise Announces Distribution Agreement With TechSmith Corporation". Business Wire. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  10. ↑ (Press Release) "GFI Software Christens Lifeboat as its Channel Distributor". The Free Library. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  11. ↑ Clancy, Heather. (2007-02-20). "Lifeboat's Ship about to Sail?". CRN. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  12. ↑ (Press Release) Marshall, David. (2007-12-03). "Veeam Software Partners With Lifeboat Distribution". VMblog. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  13. ↑ O'Hanlon, Charlene. (2009-01-13). "SolarWinds Re-Ups Its Channel Commitment". Channel Insider. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  14. ↑ (Press Release) Shafer, Laura. (2007-02-20). "StorageCraft Partners with Lifeboat Distribution". Storagecraft Press Release. Retrieved 2019-02-28
  15. ↑ ""Virtualization World View Products". Lifeboat Distribution. Retrieved 2013-08-27". Archived from the original on 2013-08-21. Retrieved 2013-08-26.
  16. ↑ (2012-03-07). "Amsterdam Area welcomes Lifeboat Distribution". I amsterdam. Retrieved 2013-08-27
  17. ↑ "Thakkar, Pooja. (2010). "Navigating Distribution Channels Within The Software Solutions Market". Technology Digital. Retrieved 2013-08-27". Archived from the original on 2012-05-04. Retrieved 2013-08-22.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.