Happy Friday, and welcome to this week’s Distribution Watch, our weekly peek at what you need to know in the world of distribution. This week we’ve got news from Avnet (AVT) and Tech Data (TECD), so settle in and let’s get to it.

Avnet: Our friends from Phoenix announced that its Avnet Technology Solutions business unit has “significantly expanded” its distribution agreement with EMC (EMC) in Latin America. Avnet will now support EMC in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and the Caribbean, in addition to its existing Latin American relationships with EMC in Brazil and Mexico.

Avnet will provide its ISV, SI and VAR partners with EMC technology, including products for converged infrastructure and data solutions related to Big Data, cloud computing, the data center, security and storage.

“Avnet is engaged with EMC via the channel in multiple regions of the world to increase EMC’s market penetration for converged infrastructure solutions,” said Sergio Farache, senior vice president and general manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, Latin America and Caribbean. “We will now leverage these best practices to grow EMC’s channel business in Latin America and the Caribbean, and accelerate our partners’ abilities to solve their customers’ business challenges with access to the entire EMC portfolio including complete converged infrastructure solutions.”

Tech Data: The global distributor and Carbonite (CARB) have partnered to offer Carbonite's suite of cloud data protection solutions through Tech Data's TDCloud business unit.

Carbonite's portfolio of solutions, including Carbonite Business, Carbonite BusinessPremier, and Carbonite BusinessPremier with Enhanced Server Backup, are available immediately to Tech Data's channel of solutions providers in the United States.

The announcement was made in conjunction with the company's TDCloud Partner Summit, held this week at the Westin Tampa Harbour Island Hotel in Tampa, Fla.

"This partnership is beneficial for our SMB resellers looking to adopt a comprehensive suite of affordable and reliable data backup solutions," said Joe Quaglia, senior vice president, U.S. Marketing and president, TDMobility at Tech Data. "Carbonite's services for data collection add another SMB-focused solution to our growing TDCloud business unit. Carbonite's solutions offer critical protection for business development, with ease of use that is key for our SMB partners."

And that’s Distribution Watch for this week. Tune in next week for another exciting episode. Until then, stay safe.