Avnet Technology Solutions plans to launch a series of off-premise cloud solutions from Amazon Web Services, the distributor announced at Amazon's re: Invent conference in Las Vegas Tuesday.

The pre-packaged services bundles include cloud backup for enterprises and cloud backup for Oracle Databases, Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise server farm and enterprise Web hosting, said Tim FitzGerald, vice president of Avnet Cloud Solutions for Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas.

"We're really excited about the relationship with AWS and the cloud elements we can bring to the table," FitzGerald said. "To develop solutions on an end-customer-by-end-customer basis is an expensive proposition. Distribution exists to provide scale. If we are able to take cost out of the solutions design process to increase repeatability, we bring value to partners."

[Related: 5 Tips For Working With Cloud Service Providers>]

Avnet launched Avnet Cloud Solutions last May with the goal of creating packaged solutions in seven categories: productivity and collaboration, security, testing and development, RMM, application hosting and management, and data center-as-a-service, according to FitzGerald. The deal with Amazon will expand offerings in several of those areas, he said.

"We've been hard at work creating the recipes of those integrated and packaged offerings. We're bringing together the industry-leading capabilities to form complete integrated solutions on top of the Amazon stack. We think it's a great combination," Fitzgerald said. "We've done the integration and packaging work to provide the framework that our partners can bring to end customers. We exist to accelerate the success of partners. We think that takes cost out of partners' businesses and gets them to market significantly faster."

Avnet's Cloud Backup for Enterprises combines Amazon Simple Storage Device (S3) and Riverbed's Whitewater cloud storage gateway appliance integrated into Symantec Backup Exec for a monthly fee, according to the distributor.

A second backup package, Cloud Backup for Oracle Databases, leverages Amazon S3 with Recovery Manager (RMAN) to provide backup and recovery for customers using Oracle databases version 9iR2 and later.

"Backup and disaster recovery is a hot area, specifically in a cloud solution," Fitzgerald said.

The Microsoft package includes a SharePoint cloud infrastructure based on Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) and includes the application, presentation and database servers that can be integrated into an existing Active Directory infrastructure, according to Avnet.

The fourth offering, Enterprise Web Hosting, includes a hosted Web infrastructure on the Amazon EC2 platform for up to 100,000 concurrent users and millions of page views per month, according to Avnet. Also, end users can deploy a load-balanced, multiple data center Web farm based on Linux that supports the DMZ, presentation, application and database tiers, according to Avnet.

Jennifer Connolly, president of The Metropolitan Technology Services Group, a Freehold, N.J.-based VAR, said Avnet's cloud offering is just what her company needs to jump-start cloud offerings to customers.

"We like to be the single point of contact for customers, this points us in the right direction to offer whatever services they're looking for," Connolly said. "Having the ability to get involved with Avnet with pre-build packaged offerings, especially around cloud and backup and disaster recovery, really helps us get out in front of everyone else."

NEXT: Cloud Training Options

Avnet plans to offer training courses around the packages and can help VARs and MSPs obtain whatever certifications are required to sell and support the solutions too, Avnet's FitzGerald said.

"At the end of the day, trusted advisors are the most knowledgeable on the technologies that make up those solutions," he said. "There's a tone of different training to partners for both Amazon specifically and Comptia-based Cloud Essentials training. We absolutely believe training is needed to be a trusted advisor."

Avnet is likely to add additional cloud bundles based on Amazon Web Services in the future, FitzGerald said.

"We think Amazon has relevance beyond these four offerings in alignment with those seven categories. Those seven categories are relevant today and we commit to remaining relevant to what our audience will look for in cloud solutions. We continue to evaluate whether we should add additional categories. We are spending time researching a couple key areas," Fitzgerald said.

PUBLISHED NOV. 27, 2012