Pictured here is Red Hat ASEAN General Manager, Damien Wong and Avnet General Manager, Chiew Yue Lam.
Avnet Technology Solutions, a global IT solutions distribution leader and an operating group of Avnet, Inc. today signed a distribution agreement locally with Red Hat, Inc., to offer open source enterprise solutions across Malaysian sectors. The collaboration has also spawned the setup of the open-sourced Avnet Solutions Center (ASC), which is open to all Avnet and Red Hat customers and partners in Malaysia.
Speaking at the media briefing earlier today, General Manager of Avnet Technology Solutions Malaysia, Chiew Yue Lam said, “Avnet is delighted to accelerate the success of our customers and partners with Linux platforms, open source operating systems and servers,” Chiew continued, “these platforms are well-poised to leverage the growing trends of cloud computing, big data and mobile technologies.”
Avnet has international presence in 11 countries, employing over 1,800 employees globally. The US-based company hit revenues of US$25.5 billion in FY’2012. In ASEAN, Avnet serves Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, Avnet Technology Solutions Malaysia is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, with offices in Penang, Johor and Kuching. Avnet servers over 25,000 customers via its 600-strong channel partners and is the leading IT solutions distributor locally.
Avnet’s core focus is on value-added IT solutions distribution providing solutions in marketing, logistics, financing, technical and sales support, industry training, business planning, high growth market specialisation, knowledge idling resources and tools; and solutions that span suppliers.
The company’s market-led, market-focused business model targets technology-related matured economies and sectors like healthcare, finance, retail, energy, utilities, government and education. Its next focus however, is the Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) market. SMEs make up more than 98% of businesses in Malaysia, and based on 2011 figures, SMEs contributed about 31% to GDP (gross domestic product), 56 percent to the workforce and account for 19% of Malaysia’s total national exports. (Source: SME Corp, 2011).
Growing demand for open source solutions
The SME market is seen as a potential growth driver for Avnet, and the company is strategising ways to replicate its success from other markets it currently serves to address the needs of the mass SME market. Also, there is a growing demand for open source solutions in Malaysia and therefore the partnership with Red Hat is a positive step towards attaining market leadership in IT distribution in Malaysia.
Red Hat is the biggest open source platform in the world and has moved beyond being a mere server OS platform, now offering middleware, cloud, virtualisation and storage solutions. And despite global server revenues shrinking 7.7% year-over-year, Linux as a whole, grew 3.4% year-over-year (IDC, May 2013). Red Hat is focused in the enterprise open source space, boasting over 70% market share worldwide. Revenues in open source software (OSS) reached US$1 billion in FY’2012. In a separate report, IDC also projects that open source software will be included in mission-critical portfolios of 99% of global 2000 enterprises, up from 75% in 2010.
Pictured here is Red Hat ASEAN General Manager, Damien Wong and Avnet General Manager, Chiew Yue Lam at the new Avnet Solutions Center.
Impressively, 80% of the world’s public cloud systems are powered by Red Hat, and this includes 90% of Fortune 500 companies and 50% of the world’s trading volumes. Its 45 quarters of consecutive growth has placed it on the Top 10 of Forbes’ Most Innovative Companies list.
General Manager of Red Hat ASEAN, Damien Wong shared that Red Hat’s vertical expansion in ASEAN especially in key areas such as government and financial services is expected to be boosted by the collaboration with Avnet. Likewise for Avnet, the partnership will give it a fast track into new emerging markets like enterprise cloud deployments. Avnet will distribute the full range of Red Hat’s solutions including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation and Red Hat JBoss Middleware solutions in Malaysia.
ASC – first in Malaysia
With the Avnet Solutions Center, Avnet is now the first and only distributor of Red Hat in Malaysia to offer facilities to test compatibility of open source solutions with their existing IT applications and systems. The ASC is a world-class IT infrastructure testbed equipped with servers, virtualised machines and integration services. Utilising the facility helps customers and system integrators to reduce risks and costs associated with adopting new technologies and system migration. With that, companies can also gauge ROI on their IT investments more accurately. Costing a total of RM5 million to setup, the center was primarily designed for Proof of Concept activities, IT solution migration testing, demonstrations, IT skill learning and training programs.
