Distrilogie Became Altimate

Distrilogie is one of the oldest and biggest storage wholesaler in France with a complicated history. From the four founders, Patrice Arzillier, Frank Didi (now at HDS), Philippe Fournier and Serge Valin, only its current CEO Arzillier is remaining. The firm was created in 1994 in France as Kardinal, a holding company which oversaw Datalogie and Distrilogie, but was dismantled and reorganized in 1998 under the name of Distrilogie, at this time mainly in backup. Finally, it was acquired in 2000 by Irish financial holding company DCC plc group, listed on the Dublin and London stock exchange.

Losing his hair but not his appetite, Arzillier – who knows how to sell his company’s shares and remaining its CEO – always dreamed for his firm to be an European power in IT distribution, and not only in storage. Distrilogie entered in server (Sun) and most recently in security products. The company tried to open its own subsidiaries in countries around France without a great success, and decided to acquired foreign distributors (see below.) to operate currently in six countries: Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain for an European network of 2,500 VARs, integrators and ISV partners. The two biggest European countries for IT are missing: UK and Germany.

The most recent acquisition – last January – is SNE, a NetApp and CommVault distributor in The Netherlands with a turnover of around €20 millions in 2009.

Last quarter, Distrilogie changed its name to become the Altimate Group. It now employs 220 people in Europe with revenues of €257 million for fiscal year 2008/2009, expected to reach €370 million in the next three years. But last year, sales in France were down 6% at €149 million.

Among the long list of its numerous storage partners: EMC, HP, Oracle/Sun, Symantec, NetApp, Brocade, CommVault, Emulex, Iomega (EMC), Isilon, Quantum, QLogic, Riverbed and Vizioncore (Quest Software).

Acquisitions of Distrilogie, now Altimate Group: