Avnet To Offer Oracle, Sun Bundles

Avnet announced on Wednesday that it has bundled solutions combining Sun Microsystems hardware and Oracle software for its solution provider customers looking to bring high-end technologies to midmarket and enterprise customers.

"The overall cause behind this is that Sun is trying to grow their market space in places they haven't done traditionally," said Tom Colleary, vices president of sales for enterprise storage and software solutions for Avnet Technology Solutions, Phoenix, Ariz. "The reason they joined Avnet on this is to leverage their partners to get them there."

The solutions will combine Sun hardware with Oracle software in bundles that address business intelligence and data warehousing. Others will address grid computing using Oracle Optimized Warehouse reference configurations. Avnet will also offer maximum availability architecture (MAA) solutions combining Oracle Database cluster technology with Sun hardware.

"They're hot technologies that people have been trying to get into and our job is to try and make it easier for our VARs to use," said Colleary.

"We have a couple of hundred Oracle partners and a couple hundred Sun partners, and we have a handful of those that do both. So what we will be doing is getting those three subsets engaged in this opportunity so we're creating some new markets for our customer base," he said.

The bundles should be applicable to midmarket and enterprise end-users, and Avnet will promote them across vertical markets.

"We have a couple of different ways we're going to market with it," said Colleary. Avnet will be going out to Sun's field offices and educating the vendor's direct sales force on how to look for opportunities in the business intelligence/data warehousing, grid computing and MAA spaces. Sun reps will then be partnered with local Sun and Oracle solution providers to sell the bundles.

"If you think of a traditional hardware supplier, and everyone thinks of Sun as a hardware company, the objective is to get the end users and sales reps to say, 'We do have data warehousing solutions,'" said Collearly. "You have two technology companies that are trying to reach markets independently using each others products, and by bringing it through Avnet to Avnet's partners it creates new markets for them."