Avnet goes full throttle with Oracle

Sole relationship in New Zealand, offering entire portfolio

By Simon Eskow, Auckland | Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Avnet will be launching its Solution Path Methodology this quarter in New Zealand, as part of its recent expansion distributing Oracle's full suite of products.

"This distribution relationship is just an extension of our global relationship with Oracle," says Michael Costigan.

Avnet has been distributing Oracle database and hardware products in New Zealand since early 2011. The company is currently rolling out the entire Oracle software portfolio, which Costigan says was rooted in a perceived gap in the New Zealand IT space.

"Oracle are driving a partner-centric model now," says Costigan. (An Oracle representative was unavailable for an interview for this story). "We’re helping Oracle expand their coverage. More importantly, we’ll be running the programmes for our resellers."

Avnet plans to hold a formal launch of its Oracle partner programme at the end of October.

"Our solutions path methodology in is our education and enablement programme that we run to get VARs to market quicker," says Costigan. "This is getting them technical advice, and deep dive in certification and sales support, and marketing programmes like demand generation giving resellers leads to close business. That’s part of the play we’re driving for Oracle."

Avnet will support the expanded offering with new staff in addition to its current three in New Zealand. No date has been announced for the solutions path methodology as of yet.

Australia-based Avnet has been on a regional drive recently. In August it announced the availability of a cloud services offering that can be white labelled by resellers to end user customers. The services include public/private cloud-based backup, DR, storage, and hosted Microsoft services, in addition to anticipated application, datacentre as a service and other offerings.