Avnet opens up over latest acquisition

Mattelli will boost partners' services capabilities, says UK boss John Toal

Avnet Technology Solutions' UK boss claims its latest acquisition could have far-reaching benefits for its VAR partners, despite the firm in question being a five-man software development minnow.

A little over a week after gobbling up pan-European distribution rival Magirus, Avnet TS announced today that it has bought Mattelli, a UK-based renewals and IT estate management specialist.

Avnet will use Mattelli's uRenew licensing renewals tool to replace a legacy tool it inherited through its 2010 acquisition of Bell. The distributor will transfer all its main vendors, including Oracle, HP, Symantec and IBM, to this tool over the next two quarters.

But John Toal, UK and Ireland country manager at Avnet TS, said it is Mattelli's estate management analysis tool that will be of more interest to partners. It will allow them to optimise their customers' software and hardware estates, in turn fuelling more hardware and software sales, he said.

"One of our strategies is to grow our services business," Toal told ChannelWeb. "We already have a healthy consulting, training and 24/7 support business, and this is a natural extension of that."

Toal (pictured) said Mattelli's five staff, including co-founder Simon Ellis, would stay on with Avnet, adding that it was preferable to own the firm's intellectual property than to resell it.

"We would rather have it in-house than have to go to a third party as we can drive development faster with Avnet," he explained. "The scope for this is enormous and small private companies always struggle to invest in new software."

In a statement Ellis, who is now business unit director, estate management services and solutions at Avnet TS UK, said: "The scale and scope Avnet brings will make it possible to accelerate the speed at which partners can take advantage of this considerable market growth opportunity."