The VAR Guy

Avnet celebrated its 50th year on the New York Stock Exchange by ringing the closing bell Dec. 15. But with the distributor’s knack for forward thinking, the opening bell may have been more appropriate. Resellers, in particular, potentially stand to benefit from Avnet’s progressive strategies. Here’s how:

With five major acquisitions in the past 12 months under its belt — including its March 2010 purchase of Bell Micro — Avnet has expanded both its line card and its global reach. For Avnet’s reseller customers operating in a number of markets, both horizontal and vertical, and in different locations, that’s speaks to Avnet’s commitment to being that trusted adviser to its reseller customers.

Indeed, growth – both organic and through acquisitions — is a major theme for the company. At its Analyst Day 2010 event in New York – at which Avnet celebrated its 50 years on the NYSE with a custom cake created by Carlo’s Bakery of The Cake Boss fame — Chairman and CEO Roy Vallee noted Avnet currently owns $24.2 billion of the $319 billion worldwide distribution market, and is bullish on its continued expansion.

ATS President Phil Gallagher said future growth will likely come from cloud opportunities as they emerge, which he pointed out will not occur overnight. “As exciting as the cloud is for us — and it is — we realize that not everything is moving onto the cloud tomorrow. And we’re ready regardless,” he said. “We think the bigger opportunity short-term is the private cloud, and we see how the cloud could change culturally the way our partners go to market. We can help them [adapt] to that change, and we are working closely with our suppliers that.” (Visit TalkinCloud, The VAR Guy’s sister site, on December 16 for s special report on distributors working in the cloud.)

Avnet executives admitted they don’t know the full extent of the cloud’s impact on the company’s business or its partners’ business, but said it’s gonna be big. Gallagher did say with a certain degree of certainty that resellers can find decent prospects for cloud services in companies of all sizes, from SMB to midsize and larger. “I’m not sure the cloud opportunity will be based on company size — certainly the smaller-sized companies out of the gate can go to a more variable model, but at same time we are seeing opportunity in the midsize model as well,” he said. “I think it will hit all tiers of the market, and our assessments so far show us that the opportunity is not unique to any size.”

The distributor’s efforts also in targeting certain vertical and horizontal opportunities and developing SolutionsPath Advisor for its reseller customers to help them learn and succeed in certain verticals — in addition to offering a slew of value-added services to assist customers in honing in on market opportunities and building business plans around those opportunities — do much to set Avnet apart from its peers. Certainly, 90 years in business and 50 years on the New York Stock Exchange are good indicators the company is doing something right.

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