Avnet: Now At Your Service

Avnet Managed Technologies offers data-center managed services, help-desk support and on-site services that are available through Avnet Partner Solutions, Avnet's distribution arm, said Charlie Babb, vice president of sales and marketing for Avnet Managed Technologies, Tempe, Ariz.

"This supplements what the VAR already offers—it will not replace the VAR. Take an Exchange server. We can host it here so the end customer doesn't ever have to worry about maintenance on the server. We can support it 24x7 through our call center," Babb said.

Avnet will not market the services directly to end users, Babb said. "That would be me standing up and letting [VARs] throw stones at me. I'd never do that," he said. Avnet does plan to leverage its own internal IT resources as the underpinnings for the services, Babb said.

MSS Technologies, a Phoenix-based IBM reseller, designed a hosted ERP solution in conjunction with Avnet that was very successful for one of its customers, said Mike Hawksworth, president and CEO of MSS.

"Once we knew Avnet was [hosting], it became of interest to me," Hawksworth said.

MSS has four other customers in the pipeline ready to work with Avnet, Hawks-worth said. "This is not a startup operation. It's the same infrastructure and the same team that manages their business across the world. That was a huge play."

DMC Consulting used Avnet Managed Technologies to help a customer consolidate 67 servers down to eight IBM xSeries servers, said Mike Debrosse, senior client executive at DMC, Toledo, Ohio.

"The [Avnet] gentlemen that flew in and spent a week here did a great job. They did the whole migration on time. I'm anxious to get another deal to work on. I'd do it in a heartbeat," Debrosse said.