Avnet Taps VMWare For Its Virtualization Consolidation Practice

Avnet announced on Tuesday that it has teamed up with virtualization market leader VMWare, expanding its Virtualization and Consolidation Solutions Practice group and its relationship with the vendor.

The Phoenix, Ariz.-based distributor will configure and sell solutions to its reseller customers that integrate the full line of VMWare's virtualization software with server and storage products from IBM, Hewlett Packard and Sun.

Avnet previously sold a limited menu of VMWare's software, but through its OEM relationships with IBM and HP, said Jack Morris, vice president, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas.

The move gives Avnet's consolidation and virtualization practice a foundation upon which to build itself as virtualization becomes more common, said Morris. "This helps us solidify and gives us a nice partner to anchor that practice. It ties very, very well within our server focus as well as our storage focus. I think this is going to be an underpinning of all of the solution sets we're going to be deploying in the future."

The relationship brings the Virtualization and Consolidation Solutions Practice its first virtualization software partner in North America. Avnet has a relationship in Europe, Africa and the Middle East with VMWare competitor Virtual Iron.

For Don James, president of Bear Systems, San Francisco, Calif., virtualization-based solutions have indeed become a ubiquitous customer request, and he sees VMWare's relationship with Avnet as one that can strengthen his position in the market.

"Literally almost 100 percent of our customers want to have the discussion at least. If they have not adopted a virtualization, it's in their plans for the future, he said.

"We buy the bulk of our products from Avnet. They're a very important distributor for us as far as for servers, storage, other software lines go. I think it's a great move [now] you can have multiple product lines on one purchase order with one quoting team," he said. "We think it's a great move."

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