F5 appoints Avnet as its distributor in India

MUMBAI, INDIA: F5 Networks announced a distribution agreement with Avnet Technology Solutions, a value-added IT distributor and an operating group of Avnet Inc in India. The agreement will enable Avnet to offer the full suite of F5 solutions to the India business partner community.

Satyen Parikh, MD, F5 Networks stated, “Working with Avnet will allow us to deliver solutions specifically designed to meet the business requirements of Indian customers in the application delivery space. We are aggressively expanding our marketing and services efforts in India to meet these requirements, and we see Avnet as the ideal platform to extend our reach into the Indian business partner community."

Citing confidence in the new partnership with Avnet, Parikh added, “Through its premier market position with an extensive network of business partners and offices spanning seven cities in India, Avnet Technology Solutions will add value to our channel by helping us build stronger alliances with key national and regional system integrators.”

G Balakrishnan, MD and Country Manager, Avnet Technology Solutions India, stated, “We will present our business partners with cutting-edge networking solutions from F5 that resonate with the requirements of the Indian channel market. Combined with our comprehensive channel approach around logistics, sales, technical, marketing and financial services, we will position our channel partners as premier solution providers and accelerate their success.”

“In these cost-conscious times, business priorities include achieving greater efficiency, cost reduction and shorter time-to-market for revenue-generating services. However, CIOs and IT organizations are frustrated by their inability to respond quickly to changing business needs due to the inflexibility of their IT infrastructure. F5 solutions enable enterprises to add, remove, grow and shrink application and data services on demand, regardless of their location, therefore stretching IT budgets and creating IT agility,” added Parikh.

This is achieved through the modular design of the F5 Application Delivery Controllers, which combine application traffic management, Web application security and acceleration features within a single device. The benefits are deferred hardware acquisition, lower power and cooling costs, less rack space and simplified management of a system. According to IDC, the market for Layer 4-7 network switching in India is estimated to be worth US$32 million by 2013.