Software manufacturer Caldera is to help resellers boost their returns from Linux-based products and services with a new channel support programme.

The company, which boasts 1,500 UK partners, is offering free commercial and technical training, free educational materials, access to demonstration software, development tools and sales information.

"This is part of a recruitment drive to sign resellers that can provide Linux-based products and services in the horizontal corporate market space," said Richard Perkins, country manager UK for Caldera.

He said the vendor is only looking for between five and ten UK partners to work with. He explained that many businesses are now looking at implementing open systems and prefer to work with partners that are backed up by vendors.

"Lots of organisations are looking at open systems but they want suppliers that have close relationships with vendors and can demonstrate the technical skills," he said.

Ireland-based reseller JSL has become the first to join the new scheme. The company previously had a relationship with SCO, which Caldera acquired in 2000.

"Caldera came over and showed us its roadmap for Unix and Linux products. In the periphery I can deploy low-cost Linux and at the core the Unix products. What we got was a true enterprise Linux solution," said JSL managing director Paul Comerford.

He said the fact that the vendor is limiting the number of partners in this scheme is positive. "We do not like to be a 'me too' reseller. If [Caldera] had wanted us to join with many other resellers, we would not have been interested."

He said Caldera's offering is now a viable alternative to those based on the Windows operating system. "Caldera has a product offering that can truly compete in the corporate space on value and technical support.""It now has products that can compete with products such as Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange, and also has back office core products that are well priced," he added.