From earnings to hirings to new rewards programs, August is shaping up to be a busy month for distributors. Here's a look at the latest news from Westcon Group, Avnet, BrightPoint, Jenne, Synnex and D&H Distributing.

Westcon Group's Comstor business unit has tapped its primary vendor partner, Cisco Systems, to fill an executive role. Cisco veteran Andreas Dohmen is Comstor's new executive vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Dohmen spent more than 10 years at Cisco involved in channel sales and business operations and was vice president of worldwide business operations and vice president of commercial business in Europe.

"Andreas brings with him a deep understanding of what's necessary for partners to effectively develop new revenue streams leveraging Cisco's award-winning technology. We are pleased to have Andreas on board and look forward to his help in reaching our next stage of growth across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa," said Dean Douglas, president and CEO of Westcon Group, in a statement.

Dohmen will manage Comstor's EMEA business and report to Comstor president Jon Pritchard.

Avnet Technology Solutions reported lower-than-expected financial results for the fourth quarter, ended June 30, with sales of $6.31 billion, down from $6.9 billion in the year-ago quarter, and earnings of $133.4 million or 91 cents per diluted share, compared to $238.8 million or $1.54 per share a year ago. For the full 2012 fiscal year, Avnet earned $567 million or $3.79 per diluted share, on $25.71 billion. In the previous fiscal year, it earned $669.1 million or $4.34 per share on $26.53 billion in sales.

"Our fiscal 2012 results reflect the impact of both a components supply chain correction that occurred in the earlier part of the year followed by slowing global economic growth during the latter part of the year," said CEO Rick Hamada in a statement. "Our Q4 revenues came in below our original expectations at both operating groups as customers grew more cautious towards the end of the quarter." Avnet experienced a weaker-than-expected June as many customers in the Americas and EMEA regions chose to defer purchasing decisions during the last two weeks of the month, Hamada added.

BrightPoint, an Indianapolis-based mobile products and services distributor, reported a $4.1 million loss, 6 cents per share, on sales of $1.27 billion for its second quarter ended June 30. On June 29, BrightPoint announced it was being sold to Ingram Micro for about $820 million.

Revenue in the quarter was affected by a decrease in the average selling price of smartphones sold in Southeast Asia and a decline in wireless devices sold in North America due to increased competition, according to BrightPoint.

Meanwhile, Ingram announced it planned to raise another $300 million in 5-percent, unsecured notes, for which a portion of the proceeds might be used to fund the BrightPoint acquisition.

D&H Distributing has developed a series of programs to support Lenovo's new ThinkServer family, including the RD530 and RD630 rack server models featuring the chips (formerly known as Romley).

The Harrisburg, Pa.-based distributor is supporting a Lenovo demo program in which VARs who purchase up to eight ThinkServer units and 12 ThinkServer options will receive discounts of up to 35 percent so that the merchandise can be used as demo units, as seed units or for internal use. D&H is also offering this vendor’s Top-Seller Volume Delegation Program in which VARs can receive an 8-percent discount for purchasing between 10 and 200 ThinkServer units and options, as well as a 4-percent discount for buying two to nine units and options.

Finally, D&H has created a rewards program for Lenovo purchases with prizes and point qualifications changing from quarter to quarter, according to the company.

The Hyve Solutions division of distributor Synnex has launched a new flash storage appliance that integrates Fusion-io's Fusion ION Data Accelerator software and Fusion ioMemory flash memory tier, with server technology, according to Synnex.

The Hyve Solutions Flash Storage Appliance can accelerate application performance by up to 30 times and deploy into existing storage networks, according to Synnex.

"Hyve Solutions has extensive expertise designing and integrating custom servers with flash-based storage solutions, and has completed several Fusion-io powered custom servers for some of the largest scale-out datacenter environments in the world," said Steve Ichinaga, senior vice president and general manager at Hyve Solutions.

Jenne, an Avon, Ohio-based distributor of IP telephony, unified communications, networking and security products, has signed distribution deals to carry ViewZ's monitors for video surveillance and digital signage applications and the entire LifeSize Unity Series HD videoconferencing solutions, according to the company.

Jenne has also added the more advanced LifeSize UVC (Universal Video Collaboration) platform, a fully virtualized solution allowing IT administrators the ability to realize resource savings by allowing multiple applications to run on a single virtual machine, according to Jenne.