Distributor Avnet Technology Solutions has expanded its Consolidation Impact Analysis program for Hewlett-Packard VARs to include storage environments.

Avnet expects CIA for Storage to drive new HP storage sales by delivering a thorough assessment of a user's environment and TCO (total cost of ownership), company officials said Nov. 28 at Acceleration '06, Avnet's annual convention of HP partners, in Phoenix.

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The assessment tool accelerates the sales cycle by providing a TCO analysis and analyzing the return on investment for all elements of the proposed solution, company officials said.

Through CIA, partners analyze data based on usage and file type to determine where storage consolidation is most needed. Then, working with Avnet, VARs design, architect and implement a tiered storage or ILM (information lifecycle management) strategy based on HP storage solutions and services.

The assessment ensures the solution is appropriate for customers' current and future storage capacity, and it gives them an objective review of the TCO and the benefits of IT consolidation in terms of both financial implications and technical capabilities.

Avnet partners initiated 90 consolidation assessments in other technologies during 2005 with more than 50 percent of those resulting in new engagements for the partners, according to the distributor.

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Avnet also announced success rates of its CIA Blade Server program. In 2006, the program launched more than 280 server consolidation projects, more than 32 percent of which resulted in new engagements for the partners.

One partner, Trilogy Solutions, of Cranbury, N.J., recently secured a project to help a large convenience store chain in the Northeast move from 136 Windows servers to 17 HP servers, said Mark Darlington, Trilogy's chief operating officer.

"Avnet provided assistance with financial analysis and modeling, helping us to demonstrate to this Dell-only shop that they can achieve consolidation savings of more than $860,000 over the next three years," Darlington said.