please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . learn how and when to remove these template messages the topic of this article may not meet wikipedia s notability guidelines for companies and organizations . please help to establish notability by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond its mere trivial mention . if notability can not be established the article is likely to be merged redirected or deleted . find sources lifeboat distribution news newspapers books scholar jstor free images august 2012 learn how and when to remove this template message this article relies too much on references to primary sources . please improve this by adding secondary or tertiary sources . august 2012 learn how and when to remove this template message learn how and when to remove this template message lifeboat distribution type public traded as nasdaq wstg industry software distribution headquarters eatontown new jersey united states number of locations 4 area served worldwide products computer software information technology revenue 339.7 million 2015 number of employees 120 website lifeboatdistribution.com lifeboat distribution is a multinational value added distributor based in eatontown new jersey and has locations in mesa arizona mississauga ontario canada and almere near amsterdam netherlands . the company has its roots in lifeboat associates a company founded in 1976 by larry alkoff and tony gold . 1 2 lifeboat today is an international specialty software distributor for virtualization cloud computing security application and network infrastructure business continuity disaster recovery database infrastructure and management application lifecycle management science engineering and other technically sophisticated products . the company has a worldwide network of solution providers vars systems integrators corporate resellers and consultants and helps them drive business opportunities expand their services revenues and build profitable product and service businesses . lifeboat distribution is a subsidiary of wayside technology group . total sales for lifeboat distribution in 2015 were 339.7 million compared to 290.4 million in 2014 . lifeboat distribution represents over 250 software vendors worldwide and works with over 7 000 resellers solution providers in more than 120 countries . lifeboat distributes software from leading publishers including corel dell software flexera software publishers of installshield gfi software infragistics intel software mindjet sap businessobjects solarwinds sophos starwind software storagecraft techsmith unitrends and veeam software . contents 1 history 1.1 early years 1.2 the 1990s and 2000s 1.3 present day 2 references 3 external links history edit early years edit main article lifeboat associates in the late 1970s and early 1980s lifeboat associates a new york city company was one of the largest microcomputer software distributors . 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 3 and also financed the creation of pc magazine . by mid 1981 the company had offices in england switzerland france germany japan and oakland california . 4 in an august 1983 article titled does corporate america need cp m infoworld said that the company was the largest publisher of microcomputer software in the world . 5 lifeboat associates successfully combined many roles including publisher and distributor and actively solicited authors for software products that met its standards . 6 7 the company distributed t maker written by peter roizen one of the first spreadsheet programs designed for the personal computer user which went a step beyond the similar visicalc program by offering text processing capability . 8 and the boss financial accounting system written by john burns a 2495 package for cp m users . it was one of the first accounting programs for micro computers . 9 10 in addition lifeboat associates started collecting and distributing user written free software initially for the cp m operating system . 11 one of the first was xmodem which allowed reliable communication via modem and phone line . 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 . 12 the 1990s and 2000s edit 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 . 1 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 . 13 through the 2000s lifeboat expanded its vendor line card with established and emerging vendors such as installshield 14 later to become flexera software intel software 15 techsmith 16 gfi 17 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 . 18 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 . 15 present day edit lifeboat specializes in sophisticated 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 19 solarwinds 20 and storagecraft 21 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 . 22 in 2010 lifeboat opened an office in almere netherlands in order to better serve the company s european resellers . 23 today lifeboat s value proposition revolves around software backed up by extraordinary customer service provided to reseller and vendor partners . 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 . 24 references edit a b programmers paradise inc. form 10 k for the fiscal year ended december 31 1996 lifeboat associates rescues alien hardware intelligent machines journal december 11 1978 walker john . february 1994 . the autodesk file . fourmi lab . retrieved 2013 08 27 lifeboat launches offices in ca japan infoworld may 25 1981 does corporate america need cp m infoworld august 15 1983 a new factor in software distribution computerworld sep 27 1982 as an author this might be your most important line . lifeboat associates advertisement infoworld feb 1 1982 lifeboat distributes t maker infoworld nov 10 1980 infonews software infoworld sept 14 1981 computerize your bookkeeping without terrifying your bookkeeper . lifeboat associates advertisement infoworld oct 5 1981 the birth of pc software . pc history.org . 2008 . retrieved 11 september 2011 . one company lifeboat associates made a big business out of providing application software versions that ran under cp m in almost any type of 8080 or z 80 computer . 2006 . programmer s paradise inc. . reference for business . retrieved 2013 08 27 http www.sec.gov archives edgar data 945983 000089457902000025 ppi10k 0321.txt programmer s paradise form 10 k for fiscal year ended december 31 2001 press release 2001 12 21 . programmer s paradise announces distribution agreement with installshield . business wire . retrieved 2013 08 27 a b press release willet bill . 2004 02 23 . lifeboat distribution is appointed intel s software authorized distributor . business wire . retrieved 2013 08 27 press release 2003 01 14 . programmer s paradise announces distribution agreement with techsmith corporation . business wire . retrieved 2013 08 27 press release gfi software christens lifeboat as its channel distributor . the free library . retrieved 2013 08 27 clancy heather . 2007 02 20 . lifeboat s ship about to sail . crn . retrieved 2013 08 27 press release marshall david . 2007 12 03 . veeam software partners with lifeboat distribution . vmblog . retrieved 2013 08 27 o hanlon charlene . 2009 01 13 . solarwinds re ups its channel commitment . channel insider . retrieved 2013 08 27 press release goulding laura . 2007 02 20 . storagecraft partners with lifeboat distribution . storagecraft press release . retrieved 2013 08 27 virtualization world view products . lifeboat distribution . retrieved 2013 08 27 2012 03 07 . amsterdam area welcomes lifeboat distribution . i amsterdam . retrieved 2013 08 27 dead link thakkar pooja . 2010 . navigating distribution channels within the software solutions market . technology digital . retrieved 2013 08 27 external links edit lifeboat distribution global website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title lifeboat distribution & oldid 743945254 categories companies based in monmouth county new jerseyhidden categories all articles with dead external linksarticles with dead external links from june 2016articles with topics of unclear notability from august 2012all articles with topics of unclear notabilityarticles lacking 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