Avnet has built and developed a community of highly specialised solution provider partners during this time that have supported Cisco through its entry into the data centre server market. In turn, this relationship has provided Avnet’s partners with access to technologies to create next-generation data centers for their customers, especially through the use of Cisco-based integrated infrastructure systems.
“With the incredible pace of change, this is one of the most exciting times in the technology industry, and it has been a privilege to help Cisco penetrate the rapidly evolving data center market,” said Dieter Lott, VP Business Development, Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA. “Avnet has steadily built a strong partner community for Cisco in EMEA that has both the technical and consultative sales expertise required by customers in this specialised market segment. Avnet supports our partner community with a wealth of resources and unique technical integration capabilities that not only jump-started Cisco and our partners’ success in the first five years of the relationship, but laid a foundation for growth well into the future. We thank Cisco for the five-year partnership and look forward to our joint continued success in the future.”
One of the key ways that Avnet has been able to help Cisco and its partners profitably grow in this market is by developing a channel ecosystem and alliances to capitalise on the integrated systems market opportunity, which IDC forecasts to reach US$14 billion by 2017. Avnet has fostered deep relationships with complementary technology vendors, such as EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, NetApp and VMware, as well as Nimble Storage and SAP in the Americas, and Datacore and Veeam in EMEA. These relationships have empowered Avnet’s partners to be able to create complete solutions based on Cisco server technology to help their customers improve productivity and profitability.