# CRN Interview: Avnet COO Hamada Talks Access Integration___Avnet reported strong earnings for its fiscal 2007 second quarter, when the Phoenix-based distributor also wrapped up its acquisition of Access Distribution. Avnet COO Rick Hamada discussed the integration of Access and what it means for Avnet's VAR partners in an interview with Associate Editor Jennifer Lawinski.CRN: As Avnet moves forward with the integration of Access Distribution, do you expect any impact on your company's solution provider partners?HAMADA: We certainly expect that we are engaging with a broad, new segment. All of these customers are not net-new. Some are broadline themselves and have multiple relationships, and we've been servicing part of their business. Perhaps we can entertain being a more full-service, full-range partner. There is a segment of customers that we maybe have never done business with before. Now can we leverage and get sales synergies from selling more of the Access solution portfolio to our old, traditional base or perhaps take some of the traditional [Avnet Technology Solutions] technologies and leverage them into this new partner base. There are some great opportunities there. We did not quantify that, nor did we build that into the equation regarding our valuation. It is certainly there, and the team will be all over it.CRN: Are there any particular technologies you expect to have a high crossover potential as you combine the two companies' customer bases?HAMADA: Interesting question. We're making sure that we learn carefully what Access had going in terms of its solutions and practice approach to the market in security, voice-over-IP, etc. The Avaya relationship, as an example, is brand new to us. F5 is brand new to us. We have a Symantec relationship already. That's more complementary. Hitachi Data Systems, we did not have a relationship with Hitachi for storage solutions. We'll evaluate each one, but I guess I would default to where the hot spots are.+---------------------------+ | AD | +======+====================+ | id | unit-1659132512259 | +------+--------------------+ | type | Sponsored post | +------+--------------------+The industry-standard server space and the storage solutions space, those will probably be two key areas to start to evaluate. Are there opportunities for enterprise VARs looking for solutions that may include or may necessitate the inclusion of some of these complementary lines? How can we service that without confusing the customers or having them call too many different salespeople? It's not only strategy but it's also execution when it comes to making it easy for them to do business with us and helping accelerate their success with a total package of offerings, not just giving them another silo to confuse them.CRN: What does Avnet have planned to boost revenue moving into the second half of its fiscal year?HAMADA: Initially, we're making sure that we get connected to these new customers, answering their questions. We're conveying a high sense of confidence -- stability that's nondisruptive to their key relationships -- and, meanwhile, executing on the actual tactical integration steps. For example, we're targeting to have a switch over and a consolidation of IT systems in the late April time frame. May 1, we should be consolidated on IT systems.As we work through the details to make sure we take care of the relationships in the existing business, [we'll make sure we] don't take our eye off the ball at all from an external point of view. If you're not careful, sometimes with these integrations you get a little too internally focused. We're trying to keep the focus on that to start, and once we get the big pieces of the physical integration done, then I think we'll put more emphasis on ... now that we are combined and together, let's really put the leverage on the external strategies and go to market in a new way with a new configuration of value that should encourage and accelerate success for all concerned.CRN: How do you plan to take the integrated company to market?HAMADA: That is in the hands of Fred Cuen [president of Avnet Technology Solutions], Anna McDermott [former CEO of Access and senior vice president and general manager of the ATS Access Division] and Fred's entire leadership team, from an enterprise server, storage, software and services portfolio point of view. We had a prior technology solutions and a go-to-market strategy in an area called business innovation. Some interesting practices were being built there. The most notable, and the biggest critical mass we had, was in our health-care practice that we call Health Path.Access has more of a security, network management and storage management set of practices around some of its key relationships. The question will be what do we organize vertically vs. what do we organize horizontally, and then how do we structure to do that? The team has been working on this prior to the actual physical close of the transaction, which was on Dec. 31. Now we have to decide how to organize that, and the team is working hard. I'll leave it to them. They will come out, I think, with some formal announcements as to their strategies and structure and implementation here in pretty short order, and I don't want to pre-empt anything they have to say.CRN: Is there anything else you want your VAR customers to know as you move forward with the integration?HAMADA: Many of them have been contacted. I've talked to a handful personally since the announcement of the deal, and my questions were always the same: 'Help us understand what you like about Access, what you like about Avnet.' And in two or three cases, I've been very blunt and said, 'Help us understand what we have to [in order to] make sure not to mess up.'We've had a lot of those conversations, and we take them to heart. And they do influence our decisions, the pace of the integration, the priority on the methodologies and the processes of what works and what doesn't. We really want to get to combining the best of both organizations as we go forward. That's certainly brought some best practices to the table. The customer input really influences how we determine what a best practice is. Their input is valuable, and we won't stop asking just because we think we're done with an integration. The only way to get better is to keep asking that question._