With a more than $1.5 billion IT services business globally, Avnet Technology Solutions today introduced Avnet Data Center Lifecycle Services for value-added reseller (VAR) and independent software vendor (ISV) partners in the U.S. and Canada. As the global IT solutions distribution leader and operating group of Avnet, Inc., Avnet Technology Solutions is investing in broadening its data center services portfolio to further enable its partners to provide holistic solutions offerings to their end-user customers for the entire data center. This portfolio is designed to complement partners' services offerings, enabling partners to easily expand their IT services capabilities and business.

Avnet Data Center Lifecycle Services brings together supplier-branded resold services, as well as managed, cloud and professional services formerly provided under the Avnet SolutionsPath® Services brand, into one strategic end-to-end data center services framework. These services span the entire IT lifecycle, including the planning, acquisition, integration, deployment, management and disposal of IT assets.

"Many CIOs have told me that services account for more than 75 percent of their data center budgets. To meet this high demand for services, Avnet continues to make significant investments to ensure our VAR and ISV partners can profitably expand their services capabilities," said Steve Kedzior, vice president and general manager of services, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas. "Avnet has now combined our data center services into one strategic framework that aligns with how CIOs and their staffs think about the data center and how they consume IT services. Avnet Data Center Lifecycle Services provides resellers and ISVs with a single source for a broad range of data center services that they can bring to market and align to the business needs of their end user customers."

The Avnet Data Center Lifecycle Services portfolio includes more than 80 Avnet service offerings sought after by resellers and ISVs in the U.S. and Canada. These services are complete offerings that can quickly and easily be integrated into data center solutions being developed by the partner and are designed to augment a partner's existing services capabilities. Key areas where Avnet has recently invested in broadening its data center services capabilities include:

Service Development Managers: Partners can now access a dedicated team of Avnet service development managers. These dedicated service experts work with partners throughout the sales process and help them close services opportunities. Additionally, partners can leverage Avnet's more than 250 technical service professionals in the U.S. and Canada to deliver IT data center services that expand their core areas of competence.

Avnet's service development managers also engage with best-of-breed independent service providers that expand partners' businesses from both the technical and geographic perspective. These service providers are thoroughly vetted by Avnet to ensure quality of service. Partners using these Avnet resources work with a single Avnet contact who is responsible for managing the sales and delivery process to ensure superior customer service.

IT Asset and Disposal Services: With IT organizations concerned about the proper disposal of IT equipment, Avnet invested in developing key IT asset and disposal services that partners can use to help their end-user customers overcome related security and compliance business risks. These services include asset disposal, data destruction and asset remarketing when IT assets reach end of life. By helping their customers resolve IT asset and disposal issues, partners are well positioned to participate in the next stage of the lifecycle -- the refresh of the end customer's data center, including new hardware, software and services.

Cloud Computing Services: For more than a year, Avnet has enabled and prepared partners to capitalize on cloud computing growth opportunities through CloudReady™, the cloud-specific component to its SolutionsPath® methodology. Recently, Avnet announced two new CloudReady consultative services -- cloud strategy workshops and cloud assessment services. Partners can build on these consultative service engagements to provide their customers with the quantitative and qualitative analysis they need to make informed decisions on how to incorporate cloud computing into their data centers. These tools assist Avnet partners with consultative tools around the cloud. These services are designed to create an opportunity for partners to work hand-in-hand with their customers to create strategies and migration paths to cloud computing. Additionally, Avnet offers a wide range of cloud services from Avnet and industry-leading cloud providers that is continually expanding as providers introduce new offerings for this market.

"We began working with Avnet around data center services more than a year ago. We wanted to capture the tremendous growth opportunities we were seeing in the market by augmenting our in-house resources to provide migration services," said Craig Rock, president of Paradigm Technology, an IT solutions provider and Avnet partner. "With Avnet's help, we can now provide a much wider range of services, including migration services, application re-engineering and thin client assessment and deployment, without a lot of additional investment on our part which accelerates our services strategy growth faster than we could have on our own. We think that Avnet's Data Center Lifecycle Services are a very smart approach because they align with exactly how our customers think about services and can easily be included in solutions sales. We're planning to explore virtual desktop assessment and implementation services to further broaden our portfolio and stay engaged with our customers as trusted advisors."

Partners can further develop their services capabilities by focusing on solutions sales in high-growth vertical markets through Avnet's SolutionsPath practices focused on the energy, finance, government, healthcare and retail markets. Avnet can also help partners further increase their data center expertise in technology specialization areas related to cloud computing, mobility, networking, security, storage and virtualization through a variety of resources, including its inaugural Data Center University to be held October 18-20 in Phoenix, Ariz.

A list of Avnet Data Center Lifecycle Services is available at http://www.ats.avnet.com/services/datacenter/.