Avnet outlines its cloud approach to business

Major distributor Avnet said it held a SolutionsPath briefing for its customers at its Bracknell HQ, and partnered with IDC to outline its strategy.

David Bradshaw, research manager at IDC EMEA, outlined the research company’s view on how the cloud will affect the IT market at the Avnet seminar.

Bradshaw believes that the market for public cloud services in the UK and Ireland will grow from one billion pounds in 2010 to over four billion pounds by 2015 – the biggest area of growth being Platform as a Service (PaaS). IDC also thinks that 80 percent of enterprise applications will be developed for the cloud and by 2014 it will account for 30 percent of IT spend.

He said that the channel ignored cloud computing at its peril. It has three options, to carry on as before, become a cloud services provider, or build business around vendors’ cloud services.

If channel players carry on as usual, that will lead to “a very uncertain future”. The second option, to become a cloud services provider, is only for players who both have specialisation and scale. The third option, a channels partner for the cloud, “is potentially the source of a strong and long-lasting revenue stream and the best long term path. There is no doubt the cloud needs the channel and now is the time to act”.

Avnet has scheme called CloudReady which it says will help its business partners to acquire specialised knowledge, including enablement programmes and professional services.

Stephen Ennis, services business development director at Avnet said that CloudReady lets its partners position themselves to be trusted cloud advisors. It already has accreditations from both IBM and HP – it can also offer EMC Cloud Storage solutions.