Briefs: May 23, 2005

CUEN, TEPEDINO TAKE REINS AT NEW AVNET AMERICAS REGION

Cuen, formerly head of Avnet Partner Solutions' IBM unit, takes over responsibility for the company's overall Americas distribution business including IBM, Hewlett-Packard and EMC as well as software and services. Jim Kleeman, vice president and general manager of Avnet Partner Solutions' HP business unit, will report to Cuen. Cuen said a new head of the IBM distribution division will be named by June 15.

Tepedino will be responsible for Avnet Applied Computing Solutions, a technology provider to the embedded OEM market; Avnet Computing Components, a distributor to the system builder market; and Avnet Enterprise Solutions, the company's network integration business.

Cuen and Tepedino both report to Rick Hamada, worldwide president of Avnet Technology Solutions.

Cuen said the new organization was formed to create synergies and reduce redundancies among the various business units and to build a better solution-oriented company.

"Our new alignment is still focused on manufacturers but it's now solution-driven," Cuen said.

He cited as an example a new security practice that could benefit both HP and IBM solution providers. SALES, MARKETING EXECUTIVE SHUFFLE AT INGRAM MICRO
Ingram Micro is losing three vice presidents as a result of integrating its U.S. and Canada sales and marketing teams.

Pat Capparelli, senior vice president of U.S. sales; Dave Walsh, vice president of marketing; and Murray Wright, general manager and vice president of sales for Canada, are departing, according to the distributor.

Brian Wiser has been named senior vice president of sales for North America. He was serving as senior vice president of marketing. Paul Bay, senior vice president of vendor management, will take on responsibilities for Canada. Mark Snider has been named vice president of sales for Canada.

Earlier in the week, Geno Marcoux, vice president of vendor management, left Ingram Micro to join Juniper Networks, where he joins fellow ex-Ingram Micro exec Donna Grothjan.

The moves come weeks after Greg Spierkel was named to replace Kent Foster as CEO as of June 1 and Kevin Murai was named president and COO.

IBM, NORTEL COLLABORATING ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
IBM and Nortel Networks said Nortel has hired IBM consultants, engineers and scientists—from across nearly every IBM group—in a joint development effort to design and develop new products for the telecommunications company.

As part of the deal, the two companies have set up the Nortel-IBM Joint Development Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C. There, staff from both companies will team to extend Nortel's existing products and collaborate to create new products related to end-to-end broadband, VoIP, multimedia services and wireless broadband. That collaboration initially will focus on developing a new class of blade servers. "This agreement with IBM is a critical component of our strategy to partner for growth," said Bill Owens, Nortel vice chairman and CEO, in a statement.