SAN ANTONIO–Aug. 12, 2004–Avnet Partner Solutions, IBM Americas, the leading value-added distributor of IBM enterprise computing products, storage, software and services, today announced a suite of professional services to extend IBM resellers’ capabilities to provide solution configuration, installation and deployment. Avnet’s On Demand Professional Services program expands reseller resources to implement IBM storage and server solutions in order to enhance their revenues, profitability and overall success.
According to Roger Arndt, vice president of product and customer marketing for Avnet Partner Solutions, IBM Americas, the first On Demand Professional Services offerings centered on complex storage solutions. “Storage is inherently a complicated solution, where resellers need to put together a lot of different pieces — both hardware and software — to make it work,” he said. “Given our technical expertise across all of IBM’s hardware and software brands, it was a natural fit for Avnet Partner Solutions to offer these infrastructure services and help our partners extend their business reach.”
He added, “By reselling Avnet’s Services offerings, our partners can satisfy additional customer requirements and make more money. Or we can work side by side for skills transfer. Either way, we see Professional Services as another important way to enable our partners’ success.”
Avnet Partner Solutions currently offers professional services for Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), Tivoli Storage Resource Manager (TSRM), FastT, and Shark, and has recently expanded to include solutions for IBM pSeries such as High Availability Multi-Cluster Processor (HAMCP).
Weidenhammer Systems Corp., an IBM Premier Business Partner located in Wayne, Pa., recently relied on Avnet’s On Demand Professional Services to deliver an advanced storage solution for a well-known firm in the financial sector.
“Weidenhammer has been providing solutions to our customers over the past few years in response to government regulations like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley,” said Rick Finley, director of solutions development at Weidenhammer. “Our customers are concerned with these regulations, and need to be able to manage data, not just store it. They are looking to develop archiving policies, for example. Solutions like these call for a wide range of skills across a variety of products.”
The solution for the financial services company called for an optical jukebox for record retention and e-mail archiving, and required Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) and Hierarchical Storage Manager (HSM) — advanced storage skills that the firm did not have in the Florida geography. Weidenhammer engaged Avnet’s On Demand Professional Services to send a local engineer to work on-site with the customer.
According to Finley, the service provided greater flexibility and quicker installation for the end-user customer and expanded Weidenhammer’s ability to deliver sophisticated services outside their geography without incurring significant additional expense.
“Partnering through Avnet Partner Solutions’ On Demand Professional Services extended our regional coverage to the far south,” noted Finley. “They provided services at a reasonable cost with very high levels of customer satisfaction, which is extremely important to us.
“Avnet Partner Solutions was the natural choice for us because of our long-standing relationship,” he explained. “We knew we could expect quality support, and that Avnet Partner Solutions would stand behind their work and do whatever it took to get the job done right.”
