fred_cuen

First, some background. Roughly 800 IBM channel partners and vendors are attending the Avnet-hosted summit in San Antonio, Texas. Fred Cuen, senior VP and GM of IBM Solutions at Avnet Technology Solutions, offered the following key points.

1. Go Vertical: Cuen noted that Avnet is launching SolutionsPaths for banking, retail and energy. Cuen briefly blanked out on the retail mention, before delivering a humorous on-stage recovery. Key takeaway: Cuen sounded like a genuine person who actually cares about IBM partners.

Meanwhile, Tony Vottima, senior VP of solution development and marketing, delivered a deeper dive on the vertical efforts — EnergyPath, FinancialPath and RetailPath. In the U.S. banking market, there are 8,500 financial institutions and only 60 are considered tier-one direct sales opportunities. The other 8,440 are partner plays, Vottima said.

2. Up, Up and Away: For the first nine months of 2010, Cuen said Avnet’s IBM-related sales grew dramatically — pointing to increasing sales of Power systems (up 3%), System X (up 81%), new software licenses (up 16%) and storage (up 48%). During the same period, government sales hit $217 million and health care sales topped $295 million, Cuen added.

3. Taking Shots At Oracle, HP and Cisco: Cuen noted that Oracle’s new strategy — Hardware, Software, Complete — sounds familiar. “We’ll, other than leaving out services it sounds like a brilliant strategy for me,” said Cuen. “In fact, it’s been IBM’s strategy for more than 15 years.” He took similar shots at HP and Cisco.

4. Triple Play: Vottima pointed to additional opportunities in data center, cloud and mobility solutions. The VAR Guy has briefings on all three topics later today.

Now here’s the irony: Avnet Technology Solutions also has close working relationships with Oracle, HP and Cisco. So how is Avnet balancing those relationships? More thoughts on that later today.

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