Avnet Expands Services to HP Unix Servers

The announcement was made at Avnet's HP Partner Summit held Nov. 26-29 in Phoenix. The companies also announced that Avnet's HP business reached a landmark $1 billion in revenue worldwide in HP's 2007 fourth fiscal quarter.

Avnet's CIA services provide VAR partners with a methodology and industry standards for server, storage consolidation and now Unix server consolidation assessments, Avnet said. As a part of the CIA methodology, Avnet and its partners collect server performance and workload data over several weeks to determine how much processing power and memory is actually being used in a customer's data center.

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Avnet also evaluates the financial aspects of a server environment, including systems purchase expense, power consumption, heating and cooling, system management resources, maintenance, and downtime. The result is a TCO (total cost of ownership) model, based on standardized accounting practices for the customer.

Avnet said Unix-based server environments are especially challenging to consolidate because Unix servers typically support back-end applications and databases and are more heavily used across the enterprise. Gaining a true benchmark of server demands helps VARs plan for growth and accurately estimate current and future infrastructure needs within customers' IT budget, Avnet said. While in some cases a more accurate assessment may mean a higher up-front cost, it can save customers money in the long run, said Ryan Parrish, senior enterprise account manager at HP VAR American Digital.

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Avnet and American Digital teamed up to provide CIA services for an HP customer that wanted to purchase HP Integrity servers, Parrish said. American Digital and Avnet generated an assessment that called for a larger number of servers and therefore higher costs, a result that differed from another vendor's initial recommendations. However, Parrish said the CIA analysis was based on real performance data rather than estimates and took redundancy requirements into consideration. Based on the assessment, American Digital showed its customer that the seemingly lower-cost solution would have addressed immediate needs but wouldn't provide redundancy or support maintenance situations. The customer agreed, and American Digital's revenue on the deal was increased by 20 percent, Avnet said.

"It was a difficult sale because we were recommending a more expensive solution that had a longer return on investment than customers typically like to see," Parrish said. But because Avnet performed the consolidation assessment, American Digital was able to show how their solution would handle eventual increases in demand and server redundancy requirements, he said.

Also at the event in Phoenix, Avnet said in the past year its HP business has been the fastest-growing segment within the company.

The two firms said they will continue to focus on emerging markets such as virtualization and server consolidation and on software offerings that complement HP's hardware offerings. Avnet's vertical market focus includes Avnet HealthPath, which provides partners with health care market education and training, and Avnet's Government Solutions group, which assists resellers navigating the complex public sector with tools and programs to expedite deal closures, Avnet said.