Arrow Closes KeyLink Acquisition, Reorganizes IBM Unit

When KeyLink Systems Group employees arrived at their office in Cleveland on Monday morning, for the first time the Arrow flag was flying, marking the close of the sale of solution provider Agilysys' distribution arm to Arrow Electronics.

Arrow said Monday that it had completed the acquisition of Agilysys KeyLink Systems Group for $485 million in cash. Arrow gains about 800 reseller partners and becomes the leading distributor for Hewlett-Packard and IBM enterprise products.

Arrow has also shuffled its management team, integrating KeyLink's and Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions' IBM groups under one global group. The Melville, N.Y-based distributor has yet to name someone to head to its global IBM business unit, but the IBM groups from KeyLink and Arrow will continue to operate as separate entities for the time being, the company said.

"Right now, we're going through a very detailed and deliberate integration so that our customers have zero negative effects of this acquisition [and] really only positive. By keeping them running in a parallel process, we think we're minimizing risks," said Arrow ECS co-president Kevin Gilroy.

Eric Williams will serve as vice president of the Arrow ECS IBM group, and Mark Taylor will serve as vice president of the Arrow KeyLink IBM group, according to Arrow.

Resellers should not experience much disruption in other areas now that the companies are operating under one banner, Gilroy said.

"They'll see some levels of management change. They won't see much changing in their coverage model. We'll continue to cover them with a combination of the legacy Arrow sales team and the legacy KeyLink sales team," he said. "We'll continue to take the assets of both companies and deploy them into the marketplace."

Arrow plans to continue to operate KeyLink's Cleveland integration center and will expand its integration service offerings to resellers, said Arrow ECS co-president Catherine Morris.

"There certainly is complete dedication to keeping the sales teams intact [and] keeping the IT systems up and running, so disruption is at a minimum. That is the absolute goal for the reseller community. The longer-term vision is taking the best practices of both and expanding," she said.

Arrow will keep many of KeyLink's partner-facing IT tools up and running as it evaluates how to integrate the systems during the summer, Morris said.

Last winter, Arrow made two acquisitions in addition to KeyLink. In December, Arrow purchased U.K.-based InTechnology, a distributor of storage and security. Arrow completed its purchase of Alternative Technology, an Englewood, Colo.-based specialty distributor, in November.