Bell Microproducts Inks Deal With Red Hat

June 28 2006

Bell Microproducts Inc. (Nasdaq: BELM), today announced a new partnership with Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise. The deal allows Bell Microproducts to enhance its product portfolio with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and provide a wider range of turn-key solution suites and stand alone products.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the market-leading open source platform in our core markets," said Gary Gammon, senior vice president of marketing for Bell Microproducts' Enterprise Division. "This partnership allows us to provide a one-stop-shopping opportunity for our customers by providing solutions that are built around Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's just another example of how we strive to provide our customers with a wide variety of choices to fulfill their business needs."

According to the terms of the agreement, Bell Microproducts, a leading provider of a wide range of high-technology products, solutions, and services for the industrial and commercial markets, is now a certified Red Hat distributor. Responding to Bell Microproducts' customer demand, the company has made it a major business initiative to expand its Linux practice. This partnership with Red Hat provides another piece of Bell Microproducts' solution for the Linux community and is another proof point that Linux continues to grow in popularity and enterprise market share is on the rise.

"Our partnership with Bell Microproducts is a natural fit for Red Hat as we share common goals of quality, service, and choice for resellers and users," said Ed Boyajian, Red Hat's Vice President of Worldwide OEM and Channel Sales. "This partnership recognizes Bell Microproducts' strong commitment to Linux growth in the channel and extends the reach of our products into their world-class customer base."

Committed to advancing open source software and its collaborative development model, Red Hat has been recognized as an open source leader. With Red Hat solutions, enterprise hardware and software vendors have a standard platform on which to certify their technology and benefit from the scalability and security of its open source software. Red Hat delivers the vast benefits of open source computing into an enterprise environment where cost-effective performance is absolutely at its most critical.

Value-added solution suites and stand alone products featuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux are available now through Bell Microproducts' sales office. Please call 800-800-1513 for more information.

About Bell Microproducts Inc.

Bell Microproducts is an international, value-added provider of a wide range of high-technology products, solutions, and services to the industrial and commercial markets. Our offering includes RAID, NAS and SAN storage systems, servers, fibre channel, software, computer components, peripherals and a wide range of maintenance and professional services. Bell Microproducts is an industry-recognized specialist in storage products and is one of the world's largest storage-centric value-added distributors.

Our products are available at any level of integration, from components to subsystem assemblies and fully-integrated, tested and certified system solutions. We add value with a broad range of services including design and configuration, testing, software loading, kitting, mass storage and computer system integration and custom server manufacturing. Trained and certified technical personnel perform these processes at Bell Microproducts' ISO 9001:2000 facilities.

We market and distribute more than 140 brand name product lines, as well as our own Rorke Data and Hammer Storage brands, to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators, contract electronic manufacturing services (CEMS) customers, value-added resellers (VARs) and retailers in the Americas and Europe. More information can be found in the company's SEC filings, or by visiting the Bell Microproducts web site at http://www.bellmicro.com.

Safe Harbor Statement for Bell Microproducts:

This release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements, which reflect the Company's current views of future events and financial performance, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results or facts to differ materially from such statements for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to: the ability to successfully integrate the operations of recent acquisitions, industry conditions, changes in product supply, pricing, and customer demand, competition, other vagaries in the computer and electronic components markets, changes in relationships with key suppliers, foreign currency fluctuations and the other risks described from time to time in the Company's reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (including the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K). Investors should take such risks into account when making investment decisions. Shareholders and other readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements.