Bell Micro is doing away with its current three brands to embrace a unified future.

From New Year's Day the names of Ideal Hardware and OpenPSL will be no more.

Bell bought OpenPSL, a server specialist, in 2004. Bell also operates under the name Ideal Hardware in the UK but in the rest of Europe it is known as Bell Microproducts.

The news may bring a tear of nostalgia to the eyes of some channel veterans.

Ideal's origins are lost in the mists of time - or at least the mists of before the internet. But, under founder and MD James Wickes, it's safe to say the firm was about as interesting as a storage distributor could hope to be.

Under Wickes, Ideal hit the stock market in the early 90s, then made forays into the worlds of TV broadcasting and internet publishing, before reinventing itself as a procurement software vendor, InterX, with a hardware distributor attached. Whether this was a smart move depends on your point of view. Either way, Bell hoovered up the distribution business, still named Ideal Hardware, back in 2000 for $27.5m.

Bell made revenues of $792m for the quarter ended 30 September.®

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