Avnet is hoping to strengthen ties with key vendors in 2009 and has identified Cisco as a primary target.
According to chief executive Roy Vallee, the distributor has deep relationships with key vendors across the globe and will be working with them to expand into new regions. But Cisco is the missing link, he said.

“If you look at where we have come – ­ evolving storage, software and servers in the datacentre ­ – and look at where the technology is leading to in the converged communications space, we need to grow our networking business. There are several relationships that we are working on expanding globally,” said Vallee.

“But the one that is missing is Cisco, and that has to be fixed. We know it wants to keep its distribution limited, but this is a matter of looking for the right opportunity.”

Vallee added that the distributor does work with Cisco, but is keen to formalise the relationship.

Keith Humphreys, managing consultant at analyst Eurolan, said: “It is a missing link and it might be the place that Cisco needs a distributor such as Avnet would be in the datacentre sector. Whether or not Cisco would sign up another distributor remains to be seen.”

Cisco was unable to comment as CRN went to press.
Aside from the networking business, Vallee said Avnet is keen to continue expanding.

“Our top priority is to grow organically,” he said. “However, provided we apply the right disciplines to mergers and acquisitions, there is a lot of value in that strategy.”

The distributor intends to stay focused on value-add, but revealed there would be plenty of opportunity in the market in both developing and developed economies.

“There are a lot of distributors out there that are realising they have to scale to compete, maybe distributors that are capital constrained. They need to partner,” he added.