Avnet expands agreement with Tyco, adds HP UNIX support to consulting services

By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- Electronic News, 11/28/2007

Phoenix-based electronics supply chain giant Avnet Inc. this week expanded two of its agreements through its operating groups, Avnet Electronics Marketing (EM) and Avnet Technology Solutions.

Avnet EM, which serves electronic original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers, announced that Tyco Electronics has extended its franchise agreement with Avnet to include all of Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and India. The extension of the global franchise agreement is focused on Tyco’s electronic components segment, which includes connectors and interconnect systems, relays, switches, circuit protection devices, sensors, wires and cable.

“Avnet has a long-standing track record of providing exceptional service to our customers in the Americas,” said Jack Voelmle, VP for Tyco’s global industrial and commercial business, in a statement. “We are very pleased to offer our customers around the world the same opportunity to benefit from Avnet’s superior logistical capabilities and innovative services.”

Meanwhile, Avnet Technology Solutions, the Avnet arm focused on value-added distribution of enterprise computing products, embedded subsystems, software and services, has expanded its OneTech Consolidation Impact Assessment (CIA) consulting services to support HP UNIX business-critical server environments.

Avnet’s CIA services aims to help its value-added reseller partners grow their server consolidation practices by providing a proven methodology for industry standard server, storage consolidation, and now Unix server consolidation assessments. To do so, CIA services provide technical and financial analysis of current server and storage environments to assist Avnet’s partners in providing recommendations for future investments based on anticipated demands and total cost of ownership for the systems.

Avnet said it has been providing CIA services for industry standard servers and storage over the past five years, and has seen double-digit growth rates in HP consolidation since launching the service. Due to increasing demand, Avnet is now expanding its CIA services to support the HP Unix environment.

“As consolidation moves into the business-critical server environment, we want to make sure our partners are able to architect and recommend solutions that are reliable, accurate and give end customers the confidence they need to make significant IT purchases,” Rick Alvarez, VP and general manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas, HP Solutions group, said in a separate statement.