The partnership allows VARs, many of which are already hitching the application to the platform, to benefit from the Avnet delivery model—building and integrating the stack, delivering it, supporting service, and bolstering sales and marketing around the solution, said Tim O'Brien, of Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash. "We moved the heavy lifting up the chain of command," he said.

Avnet will integrate the application, JD Edward's EnterpriseOne application; the platform, Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server Database; the hardware system; services; and financing. Avnet will also allow partners to utilize its managed service option: "We can build the stack and ship across the country … or we can move it across the warehouse to our managed service facility and host and manage it here in Tempe," said Scott Abbott, vice president of Business Development at Avnet, in Arizona.

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The partnership also positions Microsoft and JD Edwards as preferred choices, Abbott said.

"We're simplifying the ERP decision and rationalizing the choice," he said. "Prior to this our involvement was always reactive: They want this or that and we would build this or that. Now we're helping focus that decision. We're saying if you want to sell ERP, this is any easy solution: We will build it, [and] these are the configurations we prefer based on the size of the company, the vertical focus or industry the prospect is in. It's tested and proven."

Resellers also benefit from the economies of scale brought to bear by a more broadly distributed configuration.

Avnet will back up the program with sales and marketing market, the company said.

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Oracle expects support for Microsoft to influence upgrades, O'Brien said.

A recent survey by Microsoft of 105 ERP customers indicated 63.5 percent already use JD Edward's EnterpriseOne (34.1 percent use Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise and 9.5 percent use JD Edwards World). Among those, 71.4 percent use Windows Server and 64.3 percent use SQL Server (20.6 percent use Oracle Server and 24.6 percent use IBM's DB2.)

Seventy-six percent of users said support for Windows Server would impact their consideration of future ERP applications and 66.4 percent felt similarly about support for SQL Server.