Avnet expands into virtualisation with Virtual Iron

The deal will see Avnet distribute the Virtual Iron virtualisation product portfolio as well as provide services and support to the vendor's VAR partners in Australia.

Avnet’s business partners will now be able to offer a variety of open source virtualisation products ranging from client-side virtual desktops through to X86-based virtualised data centres.

Michael Costigan, marketing director Avnet Technology Solutions, told CRN: “Virtualisation is a very hot topic in Australia today. A lot of our business partners have been talking to us about virtualization and now we’re able to offer them a complete virtualisation solution.”

Costigan says the partnership offers resellers a valuable business opportunity as virtualisation continues as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the Australian IT market.

“Part of our brief is to go out and recruit and enable new partners to the Virtual Iron solution. A lot of our current business partners are selling virtualisation solutions, so now we hope to get them selling Virtual Iron virtualisation solutions,” he said.

Avnet is also looking to expand its storage relationships with an announcement to be made on Monday about a new relationship with “an up and coming storage vendor.” Costigan claimed the new union will complement rather than conflict with Avnet’s existing storage partnership with IBM and HP.