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Avnet unveils unified communications push

Distributor sees UC as growth hotspot in 2009 and has unveiled a new tool for resellers

Avnet offices

Avnet is close to completing its unified communications (UC) vendor line-up and is aiming to grow that part of its business 20 per cent in 2009.

The distributor inherited a UC business when it bought Horizon last year, adding to its existing UC skills around IBM and Samsung.

Wayne Gratton, director of Avnet Technology Solutions, said the distributor is poised to sign a fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) vendor to round out its portfolio.

The distributor has also just launched a new Modular Open Architecture (MOA) tool designed to help resellers harness end users' existing infrastructure in UC deployments.

Gratton told CRN: “We are looking to bring together the best vendors to work with the existing infrastructure people may have from another vendor. For instance, we do not sell Cisco but we are looking to augment people’s Cisco ecosystems with products from our ecosystem.”

Gratton said Horizon’s UC portfolio spans telecoms, network communications, visual communications and desktop and collaboration software.

“We have not selected a FMC vendor yet but will be announcing a signing soon,” he said.

“Our goal is to bring partners from those separate markets and help them to do at least one other thing they did not do before. UC allows you to sell more to existing customers.”

Gratton said Avnet’s UC business grew 60 per cent last year and is aiming for 20 per cent growth this year.

“We expect things be a little bit more subdued this year but we still see it as a strong growth market. Because of the MOA we can enhance existing infrastructures so you do not necessarily need to rip and replace,” he said.